What is trust for?
Does it help us do anything good, for instance?
Trust is a funny thing. We use this word for so many things that on first thought don’t seem associated with trust at all.
“My boss doesn’t trust me, he’s a micromanager.”
“The test result is negative, but I don’t know if I can trust it.”
“I can’t trust him to do the laundry.”
It’s an important concept to us, trust. We use it to carry such important relationships forward – or keep them in check.
We’ve all worked with someone who has difficulty trusting subordinates – or more usually, anyone! – to complete tasks without constant monitoring. But most of us don’t work with such a person for very long. No one does – because working within an atmosphere of distrust is intolerable to us; it’s unnatural.
7 people died in 1982 as a result of drug tampering with Tylenol bottles, generating widespread panic. Tylenol changed their packaging. They wanted people to know they could trust Tylenol.
The kind of trust Tylenol struggled with, through no fault of its own — corporate trust — is clear-cut. You believe Tylenol is safe, or you don’t, and you act on that belief. It’s simple, clear, and measurable. That’s because your relationship with Tylenol is transactional. It’s sufficient that you trust them in a fairly narrow lane. Within that lane, you may have very low tolerance for failure, but it’s a known quantity. Tylenol can determine what is necessary to earn your trust, and Tylenol can measure when it has achieved it.
But what about our more complex relationships, at work, at home, in private life? Those are much harder to pin down.
My friend Tom is brilliant — fast on his feet, intuitive, decisive, and with exceptional instincts. And for years he struggled professionally — he couldn’t maintain the staff continuity close to him that he needed to undertake the bold initiatives he envisioned. And he couldn’t think why.
“They don’t understand how important this project is-” Tom would begin, and I would know another associate would soon have one foot out the door. When only Tom appreciated the project, only Tom would soon be left holding the bag. It happened again and again, and finally Tom asked my advice.
“What would happen if you just … trusted your team to do it?”
Tom’s face actually turned white — it was just like a Victorian novel. He couldn’t imagine it.
“Seriously,” I said, “what if you just left town?”
Every year Tom and his wife went away, just the two of them, for two weeks. The annual trip wasn’t far off.
We talked through strategy and he decided to start small — to kick off a project the week before departing for vacation, and let the team manage it without his interference (“supervision” was the word Tom would prefer).
Of course it was fine; it’s always fine.
Tom never became a person who trusted easily, or without a careful assessment of the other person. But he did come to see that he wasn’t the only person who could do things. It transformed his professional life, but more, it freed him from a terrible loneliness.
Trust is a powerful thing.
What about abused trust? That’s still more complex.
Betsy is struggling: she’s a recent empty-nester, and a long-term professional engagement that’s deeply meaningful to her is nearing its conclusion. Her marriage is going through a period of adjustment. Everything feels uncertain.
So Betsy reaches out to friends and family, asking for support. But the support they can and do offer isn’t what she hoped, and Betsy becomes angry.
“I can’t trust anyone,” Betsy tells me, “they’re all let me down.”
But perhaps that’s not so straightforward. What Betsy wanted from her friend was a kind of therapeutic solution which they couldn’t provide. Betsy’s real problem is not one of trust at all, but of asking the right people for the right things. It’s a problem of appropriateness.
Developing habits of trust is alchemical, or can be. It can transform relationships and fire them with new potential and energy. But what are we willing to bring to trusting exchanges? How do we consider them? What do we want them to become?
