Facets of Trust
Trust is a word that I am hear a lot lately. Sadly, there is a lot of broken trust or an absence of trust.
Where do you feel less safe than you’d like to?
A lack of trust is painful, draining and undermines the relationships that matter.
There has been a lot of pressure lately, right?
What is going on?
Before Covid, most Canadians experienced lives that had a high degree of predictability. We could predict that we would work at the office, that gasoline, bread, butter, cat food and cereal would be affordable and available. There were a lot of things that we took for granted. This is called predictive trust. The sun rises in the morning and sets at night. We trust it because we can predict it.
The lack of predictability on so many fronts over the past few years has meant that our brains have had a lot more work to do to feel safe.
Unfortunately, this has affected our most valuable resource, our relationships.
The simplest way to feel safe, when predictive trust is not available, is a human default; blame.
“It must be _________’s fault,” becomes the story that our overtaxed brain finds strangely satisfying. It feels like a pressure valve has been opened momentarily. Temporary relief.
The challenge with blame is that it is addictive… and it undermines trust.
How can we cultivate trust in our relationships?
Our ability to grow trust and rebuild trust in essential relationships is a skill that can be grown and refined… and it’s worth it.
Charles Feltman describes trust as “Choosing to risk making something you value, vulnerable to another person’s actions.” Without trust there is no connection, and if Covid has taught us anything, we all need connection.
I like to think of trust as a diamond. It takes time and the right conditions to grow.
How can we create optimal conditions for trust?
The first step is the desire to grow the diamond! Rather than focusing on the problem, defaulting to blame, a shift in our thinking is helpful.
Focus: I want to grow trusting relationships
Don’t get discouraged. The heat that it takes to make a diamond is essential to the process. Trust is much the same.
Growing trust takes work and is courageous. It doesn’t happen overnight.
Action: Get curious. Ask questions. What do you need? What does the other person need? What does the relationship need?
Growing trusting relationships does not mean that we ignore challenges, it means that we explore ways to address questions, rather than jumping to blame.
So often when we experience distrust, we think that the relationship is is fractured, broken and not salvageable. What if we could polish one side of the relationship diamond and make it beautiful again?
What kind of questions help us design and shape the facets of trust? When distrust has grown in a relationship, it’s likely one of 7 facets of the diamond that needs attention, curiosity and conversation.
Brené Brown has done some great work that shows us that trust can be grown, broken and mended in at least seven different areas. (If you’d like to see more, search BRAVING Trust and you’ll find a definition for each of these words, and more.)
B - Boundaries
R - Reliability
A - Accountability
V - Vault
I - Integrity
N - Non-judgement
G - Generosity
What does this look like? Sound like?
One powerful conversation comes to my mind here. I experienced a situation where someone broke my trust by sharing a story of mine that wasn’t theirs to tell. I felt betrayed. Instead of writing off the relationship, I chose to get grounded and then walk into the necessary conversation about Vault, what works for me and what doesn’t work for me. It truly was a brave conversation. The result was a more open conversation about what both of us need in the relationship… we grew trust and deepened connection that day.
There are no guarantees that the other person will respond with openness to the conversation, but it’s worth the effort to grow connection. This is vulnerability based trust. It’s grown in small moments and different, maybe a bit more precious, than predictive trust.
I’ll invite you to experiment and grow those precious gems. See what’s possible. Diamonds come in all shapes, sizes and colours. Your relationship with your colleague, boss or employee may not be what you think it should be; if you both work towards growing trust, there’s no telling what you’ll be able to create!
Trust is courageous and courage is contagious. Start talking about how trust grows for you and see where the conversation takes you! Let’s work together to grow the trust, the love and the belonging that we truly desire.