Are you ready to delve into one of life's most crucial relationship building skills —the ability to build, maintain and repair trust?
Whether it’s in personal relationships or professional environments, navigating and understanding trust can drastically enhance our interactions, our well-being, and literally shape the life we’re able to create!
Today, I'm thrilled to share a powerful four-dimensional trust framework that I’ve found instrumental in building trust, and also repairing it when it's been lost or broken
Join me as we explore how sincerity, competency, reliability, and care form the pillars of trusting relationships and how we can apply this framework to create healthier, stronger bonds and minimize the corrosive impact of distrust in our relationships.
Get ready to transform your approach to trust so you can almost guarantee your relationships have a strong, healthy foundation!
- Mark
Let’s connect:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrobertsonpcc
Email: mark@coachmark.com
Website: www.coachmark.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Mark Robertson (00:00):
Welcome to Wake Up and Pay Attention, the
(00:02):
podcast fueling positive changefrom the inside out. Mark
Robertson, your host. With over25 years as a professional
coach, I'm thrilled to explorethe personal growth tools that
have helped me and hundreds ofpeople just like you design and
awaken to their best life. Ifyou've ever felt overwhelmed and
unfulfilled, like you're justgoing through the motions day
(00:23):
after day, maybe you're afraidone day all the balls are going
to drop, you're in the rightplace. Together, let's expand
our self awareness and makesustainable shifts that improve
our communication skills,relationships, and overall well
being. This is a judgment freezone where openness,
understanding and support rule.So grab your headphones and get
(00:45):
ready. It's time to Wake Up andPay Attention.
Hello, WUAPA listeners. It'stime for episode 13 coming to
you from Midtown Lofts here inNashville, Tennessee, hard to
believe that we are on the cuspof June. Now, summer is
(01:09):
officially here starting to feellike it as well. So where are we
headed today? Today we're goingto discuss, I'm gonna share
ideas around one of my favoritetopics, especially one that I
deal with all the time thesedays and that is the topic of
trust. So let me tell you aboutmy history in terms of where I
learned it. I first was exposedto this concept of trust the way
(01:31):
to look at it when I was doingeducation for a living and was
really blown away with it. I waslike, wow. No one ever showed me
this or taught me this, what apowerful way to think about it
and put it into practice.
And at the time, there were onlyreally three dimensions they
taught to it, which I'll getinto today. And then as I became
more educated and became a coachand particularly became a mentor
(01:53):
coach with Newfield network. Weadded a fourth dimension to it,
which I had seen and had sensedwas missing along the way as I
was teaching it and working withit. So we added this fourth
dimension. And in particular, Ithink, obviously as you know I
didn't invent thesedistinctions. My experience with
education for living and newfield network, particularly with
(02:14):
new field. I think the guy thatinvented it actually was a
fellow mentor coach because wehad a really interesting
conversation at one of theannual conferences around it.
And then he came out with a bookon it which is actually a great
resource I want to mention rightup front. So the mentor coach's
name, dear friend and colleagueof mine, Charles Feltman, and
(02:34):
the book is called The Thin Bookof Trust. And I think it's
creating trust in the workplaceis the main focus but I believe
you can extrapolate that out toboth personal and professional
relationships, which we'll talkabout today. So it's one of my
favorites to really coach aroundand talk about these days.
Matter of fact, I'll give you aninteresting quote that I just
(02:56):
thought of that I wasn'tnecessarily planning on talking
about. Listen to this 99% ofinefficiency and waste in an
organization or a team is rootedin distrust. So what does that
mean?
So literally, in my coachingwork, when most of the time,
(03:17):
when I talk with people inbusiness settings that have
relationship challenges andexecution challenges and other
things. Remember inefficiencyand waste, we can almost always
drill it down beyond thepresenting issue or challenge
and get to the bottom and it'ssome version of distress, quite
amazing. And I suspect that'sprobably the same in our
(03:40):
personal relationships, as well.Many, many, many of our
challenges and issues are rootedin some form of distrust. And so
it's a topic we really have todig into and get more effective
with, I think.
So that's where we're headedtoday. So what are we going to
do, we're gonna take a deep diveinto trust. And so the way I
speak about it these days istrust is the foundation of all
(04:01):
healthy, effective, personal andprofessional relationships in
our life. It is the foundationalelement, okay. And so the main
thing that I'll be doing todaywith you is to share a more
powerful framework that I'vealready mentioned, where I
learned it, that I like to useand I teach with my clients. So
(04:22):
that they can better understandliterally, what is trust?
Because usually nobody hastaught us what it is. So this
framework is really about,here's what it is.
And then you can use thisframework, to what we say is
like to create it, to strengthenit, to maintain it to build it,
and even restore it when it'sbeen broken in your important
(04:43):
relationships. And many of ushave had that happen, so we
really need to talk about how dowe restore this really critical
thing? And so, interestingly,I'll kind of talk about this as
we begin to dive into it. It'ssomething I've been talking
about with all thesedistinctions. I think it's a
framework that I think mostpeople don't have. Yet,
(05:05):
interestingly, when I askedpeople, how important is trust
to a person? It's the mostimportant thing, it's critical.
We have to have it inrelationships, we have to have
it in teams. And yet, what Ifind is interesting is that most
people are operating with aframework around it, of that's
either incomplete, inadequate,or just flat out doesn't work.
(05:25):
It's quite shocking, to realizethat when you start to explore
this topic, and so that's why Ilove about offering it to my
clients. It's often a big aha,an eye opener, and they're like,
wow, this is much more powerfulthan what I've been using. So
what I think it can do is if youunderstand it and you begin to
watch for it, to see it to lookfor it. It can help us really
(05:47):
change our history with trust,because I think many people have
had instances where theyprobably shouldn't have trusted
someone and they did and theywere betrayed, and perhaps
strongly.
So that affects how theyapproach it now going forward or
maybe the opposite, which isbecause of their trust history
and getting betrayed a fewtimes, they're missing out. On
(06:08):
some really trustworthy,wonderful people that they could
do life with. And so it has alot of effects that I want to
drill down into and look at manyaspects of it today. And leave
you with something that's muchmore powerful to work with, like
I think many of thesedistinctions are. So what do I
want from you? Listen deeply tothis episode, it literally could
(06:28):
change all the relationships youhave in your life. Listen
deeply, pay attention, like andpay attention, right? That's our
Okay, so let's dig in. So I'mgoing to kind of start with you
podcast.
in a way that I start with myclients doing an in person
workshop on looking at thistopic. So, what I would ask you
to do right now is to reflect ona couple of relationships you
(06:50):
have in your life. And inparticular, I would say in your
mind's eye bring up someone thatyou say, you know, what I trust
this person was someone that Ireally trust in the way that you
understand trust now. And then Ialso want you to think about
someone that you don't trust orthere's distrust there, okay? So
think about these tworelationships, bring them up in
(07:13):
your head.
So first of all, I get thepeople's names as you already
have because you conjured themup, you know what their names
are? I want you to answer acouple just basic questions as
we begin this conversation.First one is this, when you look
at each of these, why have youchosen to trust this person and
or distrust this other person?And I use that language on
(07:35):
purpose, I'm going to claimsomewhere along the way you
chose to trust them or not trustthem, it didn't just happen to
you, okay? So first question,why have you chosen to trust or
distress? And so look at, youknow, is it some actions they've
taken with you? Is it somethingabout their character, something
about them?
You know, who they are, soactions are who they are? That's
(07:57):
the first question. Second one,is this as a result of whether
you trust or don't trust? Howhas that changed your actions
with them? So because you'vebuilt trust, how has that
changed the way you behave? Whatpossibilities is that created?
And then because you've at somepoint chosen to distress this
person. How have you behavedrelated to that? So I want you
(08:20):
thinking about this and I'm notgoing to give you a ton of time,
but just pay attention to whatcomes up around that. And so,
now that you've got these tworelationships that probably are
very different from a thinkingperspective, from a how you feel
perspective, from the way yourbody responds, perspective,
right? Bringing in all threeelements language, emotion body.
(08:42):
Let's now look at what is trust?
Okay, so borrowing thedefinition from Charles and The
Thin Book of Trust, here it is.Trust is choosing to risk making
something you value vulnerableto another person's actions.
Choosing to risk makingsomething you value, vulnerable
to another person's actions. Sosome words may jump out to you
(09:06):
there but for me, it's risk.Anytime you're choosing to trust
someone, person or organizationgroup, anybody. We're risking
something that's a value to us.And so trust is a topic that's
so critical, because it requiresus to risk. If you're unable to
risk anything in your life,you're not going to have trust
(09:27):
and it's going to have an effecton the quality of your life. So
let's talk about how do we knowwhen to risk something.
And so this is the powerfulframework we use here it is. We
say it this way we say trust isan assessment you make, remember
assessments, their judgments,perspectives based on the
(09:49):
observer you are. So it's anassessment you make of someone
else in four key domains, andhere they are. Mirror sincerity,
their competency, theirreliability in care, that's the
framework. You're assessingsomeone with regard to their
sincerity, competency,reliability and care. So what do
(10:12):
we mean with each of this? I'lltalk a little bit about it now
may add to it as we go, but whatsomeone's sincerity? They're
probably thoughts that came upfor you that it's their honesty,
their truthfulness, maybe howtransparent they are. Make
sincerity can be measured, whenwe see someone says the same
thing consistently over time. Wecan measure sincerity by
(10:34):
watching their actions and makesure their actions line up with
what they've said.
So there are a number of ways wecan measure sincerity and I
often will talk about, most ofus think we have a really good
sincerity meter or we often Ioften call that your BS meter.
And I think many of us if we'reattuned to that we really do.
We're listening and payingattention for someone sincerity.
(10:55):
Now, I also like this definitionof it. Sincerity is when someone
else's public conversation, whatthey say out loud, aligns with
or matches their privateconversation. So they are in
alignment. In other words,they're not saying one thing out
loud and then thinking somethingelse in their head. So often
(11:16):
people will get in troublearound this element, when people
Well, I think they have a hiddenagenda that's fundamentally
will say.
about sincerity, in many ways.And so, again, I want to tie
this back to the idea of risk,right? Because can you ever
access someone else's privateconversation? You can't, no one
(11:37):
else can get in your head andhear your voice. So it's
fundamentally about making anassessment judging someone in
one of the four domains, whichis their sincerity and saying, I
think what they're saying outloud aligns with what they're
thinking in their head. Now,this is also really important.
I'm just going a little deepright away here and that's okay.
We can't access someone else'sprivate conversation.
(11:59):
But what I'm not saying here foryou, is you need to share all
your internal thoughts thatcould be really dangerous, and
we can make a mess. I mean, ourthoughts just come and go, day
to day mind do, right? I amsaying though, when you speak
publicly, it has to align withwhat's going on privately or you
run the risk of someone judgingyou as insincere. Okay, so
(12:21):
that's sincerity. The secondcompetency, in short, what's
your skill set. Can you do whatyou say you're going to do with
this other person or can they dowhat they say they're going to
do with you? Are they competent?Do they know how? So remember,
episode before last we talkedabout competency is built
through learning, which happensthrough time and practice.
(12:44):
So if you want to know ifsomeone's competent, ask them to
demonstrate it. You're notnecessarily and you're not
really competent, if you've justread an article on something. So
it's about demonstrated actionshows competency, that's the
second one. Reliability, that'sthe third one, are they
reliable? So if you're worried,so when I talk about this, like
dependable, they've got a goodtrack record, they do what they
(13:05):
say. And so that's people arepointing at reliability, the way
we talk about the way I talkabout it is, they consistently
keep their promises with you,when they give you their word.
And, or when they know, theycan't keep a promise with you,
they let you know as soon aspossible, and they renegotiate
it or take care of the promise.
So in doing so, and having thatconversation, they're taking
(13:27):
care of trust, and they'retaking care of the relationship,
okay? The last one is care,which Charles offers might be
one of the most important ones.And we'll talk about that a
little bit but what does caremean? It means I know they have
my best interests at heart aswell, or I believe I assess
judge, they have my bestinterests at heart as well, not
(13:47):
just their own. So again, thatkind of that piece around
someone that's selfish,perceived as selfish only out
for themselves has that hiddenagenda, right?
It's often a care issue. I don'tthink you care about me, okay.
And so this one I find care isthe way we demonstrate that in
our relationships, I find reallyinteresting because I think this
one can be the widest rangingrepertoire of behaviors if you
(14:12):
will. The word I often use whenI'm doing a workshop is it's the
squishiest one. It's the hardestone to put your fingers on. I
literally have had a clientbefore say I don't trust my boss
and I ask why? And they will saybecause they don't say hello to
me in the more in the hallway inthe morning. That's an act of
care, all the way up to are youtaking care of my career through
helping me develop my career andmeet my goals? Are you taking
(14:37):
care of my money? So again, backto remember, it's choosing to
put something at risk and makingsomething you value vulnerable.
And so care is such an importantdimension of that, do I believe
So it's a two way street. And asa matter of fact, if you get
you fundamentally have my bestinterests at heart alongside of
into this topic and start to diginto what you begin to realize
yours? And it reminds me of anexpression that kind of begins
to tie these together, at leasta couple of them. I don't care
(14:59):
how much competence see, until Iknow how much you care. I think
that's what Charles is pointingat. What I've learned around,
why care can be maybe the firstthing and the most important
thing around trust. So a fewother things about this. Now you
have the four domains, it's atwo way street. Remember, it's
an assessment. So not only areyou assessing them to know, hey,
(15:21):
can I trust them? They're gonnabe assessing you as well,
hopefully using the same framework.
is that as each party is makingthose assessments. If they go
negative, or really positive butif they go negative, and one
(15:43):
changes their actions. It oftencan start to create distrust in
the other who then reacts withtheir behavior. And so it almost
has a spiral down effect. Versusare actually in addition, it can
go the other way, if we beganto, in a relationship to really
build trust, then I open upmore, I listened better, I put
(16:03):
my guard down, which you thensense and pick up on, and it
begins to expand and build uponitself, okay.
So back to the framework, thefour domains, in a simplistic
way. I would say you have areason to trust another person,
when you positively judge themand all four of those areas in
your life. There's a reason youcould trust them, okay. If one
(16:26):
of them starts to go negative,or multiples of them, then you
have legitimate grounds, I wouldsay to distrust someone, okay.
And so that's the simplisticversion, I would say, you know,
in your relationships, in yourlife, you have grounds. I'm
saying this on purpose, you havereasonable grounds to trust them
doesn't mean you will, or youhave grounds to distrust them,
(16:49):
doesn't mean you'll necessarilyfollow that, as well.
So when I'm talking about thistopic, I see, you know, there
are times and places in which todistrust others, that's okay.
It's actually prudent and smart.And then there are times where
you want to trust, okay, a fewother dimensions of this, and
then we'll get to kind of somepoints in terms of the way this
plays out. We talk a lot aboutthe difference between what we
(17:11):
call simple or basic trustversus authentic adult trust.
The framework I'm giving you isabout authentic adult trust and
what does that means? It meansas an adult human being about to
get into relationship withsomeone else. I go in with my
eyes wide open, knowing thatsomewhere along the way, because
of life circumstances, I or youmay do something to damage that
(17:35):
trust.
And hopefully, we will build itenough that we will do the work
to repair it that's authenticadult trust as open. Basic or
simple trust is the trust of atoddler or three, four or five
year old, it's you got it tillyou break it. And then once you
break it, it's gone. So I thinka simple or basic trust is
(17:55):
almost like an on off switch,like a light switch, very
binary. And what I think is thatdoesn't work in our complex,
complicated, crazy world today.It just that definition isn't
robust enough to meet thedemands of today's world final
belief. So that's why I want tooffer you this idea of authentic
adult trust. Because I thinkit's a framework that can help
(18:17):
us navigate this criticallyimportant area in our lives,
having strong trust in all ofour relationships, if possible.
And then finally, what I'll say,as we begin to wade further into
this is just what does this dofor us. I think when we begin to
use this framework to judge andwe can then take actions based
(18:38):
on that. And remember, often theaction is conversational action.
So, when I realized that I don'thave the trust, I want in a
relationship back and go have aconversation with someone to
address it, deal with it, andhopefully to rebuild it. And or
continue to build it andstrengthen it in a way because
we can not talk about it. So I'mgoing to touch on something
(19:00):
right now that I think isimportant. It's interesting.
When I ask people in workshops,or coaching them is trust
important, they say it'scritical. It's number one.
And then I might ask, so howmany of you are actively talking
about it in your relationships,and almost no hands go up? I
find it almost shocking thatsuch a critical topic, in our
relationships in life, and we'renot talking about it. And so
(19:21):
those conversations arecritical, in order to design the
kind of relationships I think wewant. And one quick tidbit what
I found with most people's it'sa loaded word to go to someone
to tattled. Trust you feels it'sscary, it's hard. I've done it a
few times and it is very scary.It's a difficult word to use,
because it often comes with thisnotion of oh, you're calling me
(19:44):
like I lack morals or I lackcharacter.
And it's really not that in away, what I'm offering you as a
But in addition to that, where Ibegan to get into is we've got
definition where we can kind ofoperationalize trust and use it
to bring it out of thebackground as something we're
more effectively. So why do Ibring that up because the four
not talking about, but we fullyunderstand how critical it is.
distinct domains of sincerity,competency, reliability. Care
give us the ability to use thosewords to point to our distrust.
And we've got to bring it intothe foreground and talk about it
(20:06):
I think saying to someone, I'm alittle concerned about you being
fully truthful or transparentwith me might go over better
than I don't trust you, thatprobably shuts the conversation
down, or I might address theissue and say, no to this
competency challenge is to Idon't trust you, and we can
develop your skills. So I hopethat makes sense.
(20:38):
and deal with it and address itin healthy productive ways,
okay. So this is often the pointI make last when I'm doing a
trust workshop because a lot ofthe attention is around, do I
trust others? But you rememberour podcasts, Wake Up and Pay
Attention. First and foremost,we've got to look at ourselves.
So if you're a person out therethat wants to be judged as
(20:58):
trustworthy, which whenever Iasked that every hand in the
room goes up. Yes, I want peopleto trust me. What do you have to
do? It's like the pop quiz.
Here it is, do all four of thosethings, impeccably, demonstrate
them impeccably in your life, besincere, be competent, be
reliable, and show care. Sothese have nuances and
(21:20):
intricacies to them. But that'sthe simplistic version of it.
Speak the truth, okay. Whenyou're not competent, say I
don't know or say here's what Iknow, here's what I don't know.
Be reliable, take care of yourpromises and then show care. And
that's an area where it variesfrom person to person. So you
might have to find out how do Ishow care to this person, it's
(21:41):
different than to anotherperson. Recently, I've been
speaking with groups about it'salmost like that book Love
Languages where you speak tothem in their love language, not
yours. Hopefully, that makessense.
Take the actions to show thatyou care, and they will
positively assess you in thatarea. Here's the catch to as I'm
talking about this, some of youmay already be going wow, I've
(22:02):
done some things that no wonderthis person doesn't trust me, or
they don't think I'mtrustworthy. When you realize
that, what can you do? Goapologizing, clean it up. I'm a
huge fan of keepingrelationships clean, where
there's nothing in between us,especially as it relates to
trust. So right now, if yourealize you've been doing some
things in a particularrelationship, go clean it up and
(22:24):
use this framework to clean itup. In fact, that's going to be
part of the homework if youchoose to tackle it in that way.
So let's talk about some moredimensions in terms of how this
often plays out in our lives. Itleads in many ways are kind of
like my other episodes, don't dothis. It's kind of the thing.
I'm giving you the example, itdoesn't work well, okay. So
let's see, they impact oneanother, they play together,
(22:48):
they're not just discretelyseparate. So sincerity,
competency, reliability and carekin as things start to unfold.
And if distrust starts to creepin, it can often cause us to
question others. So an exampleof that might be let's imagine
that someone in your life is notkeeping their promises
consistently. So theirreliability starts to go down
for you, and you start to pullback your trust a little bit,
(23:09):
okay?
And then you start to realizethe next time they make a
promise. Now, you might start toquestion their sincerity, okay,
now you're going, Oh, I don'tknow if this time they're really
being truthful about thatpromise. Or maybe you start to
question their competency, maybetheir inability to be reliable
is connected to the fact thatthey don't know how. And here,
(23:30):
let's bring in sincerity, andthey're not willing to admit
that they don't know how. So nowwe got three playing together or
it might conjure up the notionof like their lack of
reliability and keeping promisesis that they don't care to give
you a full ethic, they don'tcare to give you their full best
engagement, in terms of doingwhat they said they do. So you
think they don't care enough tofollow through.
(23:52):
So you can begin to see howthese pieces play together. I
want to pause here for a secondand pick up something that I
didn't pick up before that Ithought I had already. But
that's talking about is theauthentic adult trust in basic
and simple trust, being blackwhite on off, which doesn't work
and it's more about eyes open. Iwant to talk about the word
(24:16):
extending, okay, I think it'simportant to bring this up now
because I didn't bring it upearlier. It's not about black
white on off, either you have itor you don't. It's about using
this framework to judge thosefour dimensions. And then you
can decide how much of yourtrust you want to extend to
another person. So you can give25%, you can give 50, you can
(24:39):
give 75, 80. I think of it on aspectrum almost.
Here's this relationship. It'sbeginning. I'm judging these
areas, I'm having positivejudgments so I can extend some
of my trust, okay. And then asthey show repeatedly, those four
dimensions are continued to bepositive, I can extend more my
(25:00):
trust. And of course, that willdepend right upon what you're
risking or how much you want torisk. But it's all about, I want
you to understand this conceptof it's like, choosing to extend
your trust to someone else,versus just giving them all or
nothing. What I found a lot oftimes in is that many people
(25:21):
because of their history withtrust, whether it's been good or
bad, they polar orientation toit.
So there's someone thatimmediately right away, will
give their trust. With almost noevidence, which can be very
naive and get you burned and getyou betrayed, or be careful of
that. Or if they have beenburned a lot in life, then it
almost is like, you're gonnahave to jump through hoops for
(25:43):
me to ever be willing to giveyou any of my trust. And so that
kind of I think comes from thison off black white template that
I don't think works well. I wantyou to have this authentic adult
template is all about to beingchoosy about how much and when
to extend your trust. So I hopethat piece makes sense as well.
Few other things, you can trustsomeone in one domain, one of
(26:05):
the four and not another, okay.
You don't have to right humanbeings off when they mess up as
it relates to trust, okay.Example I think about is maybe
you've got somebody in your lifethat is fantastic at planning
parties and putting togethersocial events. And they do all
four of those well around thatthey're sincere, competent,
reliable, and they really care,they throw a great party. But
(26:26):
you find that perhaps you findthat maybe they're not the
person you want to givefinancial advice from, okay,
because let's say they're notcompetent to and from your
standard. They don't seem tocare about what they do with
their money. But you don't haveto write that human being off,
what you can do is if theinstance calls for extending a
lot of trust because it's aroundplanning a party and carrying
(26:48):
that upgrade, I trust you.
If it's around giving financialadvice, you either don't ask
them for it or if they offer it,you just let it go in one ear
out the other or you find thecompetent, qualified financial
adviser for that aspect of yourlife. So I hope that piece makes
sense as well. Here's anotherone. We often confuse liking
someone with trusting someone oreven loving someone with
(27:11):
trusting someone don't collapsethose they're not the same
thing, even respecting. While itmay be connected to one of the
dimensions of trust, you canrespect someone and not
necessarily trust them, okay. Soagain, we got to be more nuanced
but let's get back to liking orloving. Can you love someone and
not trust them? Sure, or notextend your trust and in
particular, absolutely. Imaginethis. Imagine if your 10 or 11
(27:34):
year old son or daughter comesto you and says, you know what,
dad? I have decided that I amreally ready to drive the car.
I've been watching you drive. Ilike our car. I've been watching
my friends that we've beentalking about driving, and I
think it's time so can I pleasehave the keys, I'm going to take
the car, go visit my friend,Joe, and we're gonna hang out
for a few hours. You startlaughing they may not get all
(27:56):
that other mouth. Say no, it'snot gonna happen. I don't trust
you. And they say what do youmean, you don't trust me? I
thought you love me? If you loveme, you'll trust me. No, it
doesn't work that way and youcould probably think of
examples, topic that made upexample, but you can think of
examples maybe with your spouseor important person you're in
relationship with. To be morediscerning, you can extend your
(28:18):
trust in one area to them, butnot necessarily in another.
And I know as I say that outloud, I think about that can
open up some interesting,tricky, dicey, scary
conversations, I get it. Butwhat I would guess is that right
now you're already acting out ofany distrust you have. But you
may not be doing it in a veryopen way. You may be like
saying, let me do this. Let medo that and then when they say
(28:40):
why don't you trust me? So it'snot about that, it's just this
or this. So you give themexcuses, when it really is about
distressing, and we just don'thave the emotional strength, or
the courage to talk about it.Oh, crap. I would also say this
also really important. Don'tgeneralize your trust or
distrust across a whole group ofpeople, right?
(29:02):
Be careful about how you makeassessments and extrapolating
those to other groups of people.So what are classic examples?
You can't trust a politician,right? We all are like, oh, of
course not. I don't care if it'sDemocrat or but you just can't
trust a politician. Well, theremay be some grounding in that
assessment with somepoliticians, but not necessarily
all of them. So be careful thatlike preconceived assessment or
(29:24):
prejudice is an influencing yourlack of trust, and you miss out
on somebody wonderful, right?Often, here's a more dicey one
but we don't trust people, wholegroups of people based on
backgrounds. The country theycame from, skin color, you name
it, ethnic groups, whatever. Wewant to call those groups,
(29:45):
sexual orientation groupsbecause of that, right?
And I'm going off on a tangenta little bit here, but be
careful not to generalize yourtrust or distrust based on that.
It's a person to personsituation where we can use this
framework, go in with our eyesopen, have a healthy approach to
trust and then decide how muchcan I extend along the way. Let
(30:07):
me give you more as these fourareas are positively assessed.
Let me pull back when I need toand I'm having conversation with
you about it all along the way,okay, I already started talking
about this, but let me touch onit again, what I've found in my
relationships. I'm reallylooking hard at it is this power
of distrust, I think goes thesame way with trust.
(30:29):
But when any of those start togo negative and I start to
distress, which for me is oftensort of pulling back a little
bit being more guarded, maybe Idon't immediately respond to
their text or their call, maybeI don't fully share information.
So because of my distrust, Istart to behave in ways. And
then I noticed that they startto do the same with me and they
(30:50):
start to distrust me. And awaywe go in that relationship
dance, it's like distrust breedsmore distrust. Trust breeds more
trust and so it's such animportant topic that I think we
we just again, it's great today,to begin to dive deeper into it.
Take a look at what it is, andexamine how we build it.
(31:11):
Okay, the final thing that I'llsay I think I've hit on most of
the points that I want to makearound trust, is just that
neuroscience actually backs allthis up. And so Charles talks
about it in his book, I wouldhighly recommend, if you're
interested in this topic, thatyou get this book, it's a thin
book of trust, it's 80,something pages. It won't take
you too long to read, and itcould be a game changer could be
(31:32):
a life changer for you. In fact,I'm using it a lot of the time
with all my clients. It's thatgreat a book. But anyway, he
talks about it in one of thelater chapters about there
literally are different networksin our brain, depending on
whether we have trust ordistrust, or whether our
judgments are trusting ordistrusting. It activates
(31:53):
different networks.
And therefore it also causes thesecretion of different chemicals
and that's about as far as I cantake that conversation with you.
I'm not as well rehearsed inthat area and so I don't want to
say some stuff that I'm notsincere about about that. So I
would just advise you to get thebook if that's something you're
interested in. Before we go toDavid, let's spend a few more
(32:13):
minutes. And let's talk aboutsomething I think that is really
important, because I think we'veprobably all had this happen,
what do you do?
How do you restore trust whenit's damaged? Okay. Sowe've
probably all had that. And wewould like to be able to, and if
we haven't had this framework,or we don't know what to do, it
makes it tough. So let's firstmake this distinction, as I was
taught the distinction between abreach of trust and a betrayal
(32:36):
of trust. So just using thosewords, you can probably get a
clearer sense of what I mean bythose. So a breach is often
easier to repair, it's oftensomething that we perceive as a
bit smaller, something weperceive that we didn't really
intend to do, but it happened.So an example might be I think
of today's world, and how busypeople are and how many promises
they make, usually they're overcommitted.
(32:58):
And imagine you're going througha stressful time in your life,
and you dropped the ball on somepromises with somebody, and they
start to distrust you, thatwould be a breach. A breach,
like you can go to them have aconversation, clean that up say,
look, I'm sorry, I didn't intendfor this to happen. I've been
reliable in the past. Butlately, I've been dropping some
balls, I'm going to clean thatup. Sorry, I apologize. I'm
(33:20):
gonna clean it up and here'swhat I'm gonna do going forward.
Does that work for you? And theysay, yes, that'd be great and
then you repair things, okay?That's a breach happens all the
time, right?
And again, authentic adulttrust, where we have eyes wide
open, and we have a commitmentto repairing it when it goes
south. A betrayal often muchmore difficult. I think these
are my opinions to around all ofthis much more difficult to
(33:44):
recover from because you thinkabout the word betrayal. It
literally is like, I chose thiswith my eyes wide open, I chose
to betray you and damage trustin this relationship. And once
you know that, it gets reallytough. And so the automatic
example I always think of isinfidelity in a relationship
when one person cheats on theother, okay. And I find that is
(34:07):
often one of the hardest thingsto repair is a betrayal of
trust. The damage that it's donethere. And so with both of them,
let me just give kind of ageneral thinking or template.
I think we have to be willingwhen either happens to have
conversations about it. Call itwhat it is, we need to then talk
about the new commitments weneed to put in place for this to
(34:30):
be restored or repaired. Weprobably need to talk about when
we're going to talk and howwe're going to verify whether
the trust is getting rebuiltmore about, how will the person
that's been had the breachhappen or been betrayed? How
will they verify this and whatis the person that's broken it
willing to do? Okay. And then wehave to again, revisit trust
(34:51):
more often than we normallywould have and have more
conversations about it to assesshow are we doing and are we on
the right track?
So we have to talk about theintervals in which we'll do
that. Again, my experience hasbeen very few people do this.
But I think it can be a veryhealthy way to do this in our
important relationships. Andquite bluntly, if the
relationship is not thatimportant to you, a lot of this,
(35:13):
maybe throw out the window, itdoesn't apply or you don't want
to spend your time and energy.But in the important ones, I
think it is important to perhapsfollow a different way to do
trust. So a couple otherthoughts I have about betrayals,
okay. I think breaches can beeasier to repair an apology, and
so forgiveness and we move on.
(35:33):
But betrayals, here's what Iobserved is that the person
that's been betrayed at somepoint, if the relationships
going to work and survive, willhave to forgive the other
person, the betrayer, and mayhave to be willing to update
their assessments in those fourareas. At some point, you can't
hate not forgive and hang on tothose opinions. And you got to
(35:56):
be careful about Wiggin humor,this is human learning, the
person that did the betrayingmay need to learn and grow. And
so when we start changinghabits, and again, depending on
what was at risk, and how muchthe betrayal was. But we need
probably have a little grace fortheir growth, and that's going
to be person to person.
But you again, you probably haveto be willing to forgive at some
(36:17):
point, clean the past. And thenupdate your assessments as you
see the actions you want goingforward. Okay. And then as it
relates to the betrayer, you'regoing to have to have probably
old depending on what was atrisk and what was betrayed.
You're gonna have to havepatience with the person you
betrayed, doing what I justsaid. Being willing to trust
(36:38):
you, again to let this move intothe past and for things to begin
getting better and repaired,because you're the one that did
the betraying. Okay. You went ineyes wide open and betrayed
them.
And so I say it this way, youdon't get to set the timeline on
when the other person shouldstart trusting you again. You
(36:58):
just don't like you got to talkabout it and gently, maybe talk
about it as it unfolds. But youdon't get to set the timeline.
You're the one that betrayedthings. And let me also just
say, as we start to move towardsthe end of this, sometimes the
better answer for people withregard to the kind of betrayal
it is, is we need to end therelationship and move on. But if
(37:19):
the parties move on, I would sayit's important to reflect and
learn from which, whether you'rethe betrayer, or the betrayed.
And make sure that you stillhave a healthy orientation to
trusting going forward. And wecould again, go deeper here, as
I'm not even saying it out loud,I think of the nuances. But I
just want to put some thoughtsout there around how do we begin
(37:39):
to restore trust inrelationships?
It is possible, it really isI've seen it. It just takes some
work and energy and effort forsure. Okay. So as we close this
topic today, we do it like wealways do, what are the summary
of the key points, there are alot of them. But let me offer
you the ones I think areimportant. The definition of
trust, choosing to risk makingsomething you value vulnerable
(38:03):
to another person's actions. Youdecide how much you're willing
to risk, and how much are youwilling to extend your trust,
and you decide how much value itis and how much you're willing
to risk or extend, okay, butit's always choosing to risk
And generic examples are like,think about when we drive down
something.
the street, we're trusting thatother drivers are not going to
(38:26):
hit and kill us. If we'resitting in a building, we trust
that the engineers that built itknew what they were doing, and
it's going to stay intact andabove our heads, right? So
you're doing it all the timeanyway. You really aren't
trusting or distressing. So it'slike now just pay more attention
to it because it could be at theroot of a lot of your
relationship challenges. Sothat's the definition and then
(38:48):
how do you know? Whether totrust that's the four domains.
It's making a judgement, ofsomeone's sincerity, competency,
reliability and care, all fourof those need to be positive
assessment to your standard fourgrounds to trust.
And again, you decide how muchand when. And then if one or
(39:08):
more starts to go negative,we've got grounds to distrust.
We've talked about a number ofexamples of how we do this
poorly or do it well, so I won'trehash those. But I will say
this, I think we've got to bringthis topic out of the
background, something we know iscritical, but we don't talk
about our address. And get itinto the foreground and begin
addressing it, havingconversations both at the
(39:30):
beginning of new relationships,to put it as a target that we're
both shooting for and thenaddress it along the way as it
unfolds. And then we talkedabout a critical piece, which is
how do you restore it when it'sbeen damaged? And we made the
distinction between the breachand the betrayal.
And then finally, I'll bring usback to if you want to be
(39:50):
someone who is trustworthy,which most if not all of us do.
How do you do that? Impeccablydemonstrate all four of those
consistently in all yourrelationships. And when you
realize you haven't done it,clean it up immediately. So
that's it, in terms of thesummary. So what's your
homework? Gonna be broad, butI'm gonna give you kind of two
(40:10):
options, or you could do both.Now that you realize what trust
is, if you've created anydistrust in a relationship, and
important rush to go clean itup, maybe that's your homework,
your commitment, is to go makeamends and clean up any actions
you've taken, that betray any ofthose four domains, to repair
distrust. You'd be surprised atwhat that will do in your
(40:33):
relationships, then to that one,obviously, it's about looking at
yourself and owning youractions.
The other will be looking to theother person, if you have an
important relationship and youdistress them. It will be about
addressing that going and havingconversations using this
framework with as much dignityand respect as you can to point
it out, see if they see it, seeif they'll buy into it. And then
(40:57):
if you can reach agreement onhow important it is in your
relationship dance, can we thenagain, have the conversation
about what new commitments andnew action do we need to make?
How are we going to verifywhether trust is getting rebuilt
along the way? And then how muchare we going to check in at what
intervals should we be talkingabout it to make sure that it's
(41:17):
taken care of. So listen, that'sit. I mean, it's a very big
topic.
I just really wanted to share itwith you now, on the heels of
the leadership episode from lasttime. I want you to have the
most healthy relationships youcan have. So I'll close with the
way I speak about it again,trust is the foundation for all
healthy, effective humanrelationships, personal and
(41:41):
works. I really want you topersonally and professionally be
in strong, high trustrelationships. Be a part of
strong high trust teams and be apart of strong high trust
communities. So hopefully, onceagain, we've provoked some
thinking, maybe it's woken youup a bit and you'll pay
attention to this. And maybethere's some behaviors that you
(42:03):
want to commit to intake tobegin building more trust in
your life. So listen to WUAPAlistener, take care. I hope you
be well over the next few weeksuntil the next episode comes
out. And I look forward tocontinuing the conversation as
we move forward in the future,take care.
Well, my friends, that's a wrapfor today. I'm so grateful you
(42:24):
join me and hope you feelenergized by the insights we
took a deeper look at together.If anything resonated with you
or inspired new thinking, dropme a note. I'd love to hear your
biggest takeaway. Please join menext time as we dive deeper into
this never ending journey ofself discovery. Until then, be
well be present live fully andauthentically. Wake Up and Pay
(42:47):
Attention.
Welcome to Wake Up and Pay Attention, the
(00:02):
podcast fueling positive changefrom the inside out. Mark
Robertson, your host. With over25 years as a professional
coach, I'm thrilled to explorethe personal growth tools that
have helped me and hundreds ofpeople just like you design and
awaken to their best life. Ifyou've ever felt overwhelmed and
unfulfilled, like you're justgoing through the motions day
(00:23):
after day, maybe you're afraidone day all the balls are going
to drop, you're in the rightplace. Together, let's expand
our self awareness and makesustainable shifts that improve
our communication skills,relationships, and overall well
being. This is a judgment freezone where openness,
understanding and support rule.So grab your headphones and get
(00:45):
ready. It's time to Wake Up andPay Attention.
Hello, WUAPA listeners. It'stime for episode 13 coming to
you from Midtown Lofts here inNashville, Tennessee, hard to
believe that we are on the cuspof June. Now, summer is
(01:09):
officially here starting to feellike it as well. So where are we
headed today? Today we're goingto discuss, I'm gonna share
ideas around one of my favoritetopics, especially one that I
deal with all the time thesedays and that is the topic of
trust. So let me tell you aboutmy history in terms of where I
learned it. I first was exposedto this concept of trust the way
(01:31):
to look at it when I was doingeducation for a living and was
really blown away with it. I waslike, wow. No one ever showed me
this or taught me this, what apowerful way to think about it
and put it into practice.
And at the time, there were onlyreally three dimensions they
taught to it, which I'll getinto today. And then as I became
more educated and became a coachand particularly became a mentor
(01:53):
coach with Newfield network. Weadded a fourth dimension to it,
which I had seen and had sensedwas missing along the way as I
was teaching it and working withit. So we added this fourth
dimension. And in particular, Ithink, obviously as you know I
didn't invent thesedistinctions. My experience with
education for living and newfield network, particularly with
(02:14):
new field. I think the guy thatinvented it actually was a
fellow mentor coach because wehad a really interesting
conversation at one of theannual conferences around it.
And then he came out with a bookon it which is actually a great
resource I want to mention rightup front. So the mentor coach's
name, dear friend and colleagueof mine, Charles Feltman, and
(02:34):
the book is called The Thin Bookof Trust. And I think it's
creating trust in the workplaceis the main focus but I believe
you can extrapolate that out toboth personal and professional
relationships, which we'll talkabout today. So it's one of my
favorites to really coach aroundand talk about these days.
Matter of fact, I'll give you aninteresting quote that I just
(02:56):
thought of that I wasn'tnecessarily planning on talking
about. Listen to this 99% ofinefficiency and waste in an
organization or a team is rootedin distrust. So what does that
mean?
So literally, in my coachingwork, when most of the time,
(03:17):
when I talk with people inbusiness settings that have
relationship challenges andexecution challenges and other
things. Remember inefficiencyand waste, we can almost always
drill it down beyond thepresenting issue or challenge
and get to the bottom and it'ssome version of distress, quite
amazing. And I suspect that'sprobably the same in our
(03:40):
personal relationships, as well.Many, many, many of our
challenges and issues are rootedin some form of distrust. And so
it's a topic we really have todig into and get more effective
with, I think.
So that's where we're headedtoday. So what are we going to
do, we're gonna take a deep diveinto trust. And so the way I
speak about it these days istrust is the foundation of all
(04:01):
healthy, effective, personal andprofessional relationships in
our life. It is the foundationalelement, okay. And so the main
thing that I'll be doing todaywith you is to share a more
powerful framework that I'vealready mentioned, where I
learned it, that I like to useand I teach with my clients. So
(04:22):
that they can better understandliterally, what is trust?
Because usually nobody hastaught us what it is. So this
framework is really about,here's what it is.
And then you can use thisframework, to what we say is
like to create it, to strengthenit, to maintain it to build it,
and even restore it when it'sbeen broken in your important
(04:43):
relationships. And many of ushave had that happen, so we
really need to talk about how dowe restore this really critical
thing? And so, interestingly,I'll kind of talk about this as
we begin to dive into it. It'ssomething I've been talking
about with all thesedistinctions. I think it's a
framework that I think mostpeople don't have. Yet,
(05:05):
interestingly, when I askedpeople, how important is trust
to a person? It's the mostimportant thing, it's critical.
We have to have it inrelationships, we have to have
it in teams. And yet, what Ifind is interesting is that most
people are operating with aframework around it, of that's
either incomplete, inadequate,or just flat out doesn't work.
(05:25):
It's quite shocking, to realizethat when you start to explore
this topic, and so that's why Ilove about offering it to my
clients. It's often a big aha,an eye opener, and they're like,
wow, this is much more powerfulthan what I've been using. So
what I think it can do is if youunderstand it and you begin to
watch for it, to see it to lookfor it. It can help us really
(05:47):
change our history with trust,because I think many people have
had instances where theyprobably shouldn't have trusted
someone and they did and theywere betrayed, and perhaps
strongly.
So that affects how theyapproach it now going forward or
maybe the opposite, which isbecause of their trust history
and getting betrayed a fewtimes, they're missing out. On
(06:08):
some really trustworthy,wonderful people that they could
do life with. And so it has alot of effects that I want to
drill down into and look at manyaspects of it today. And leave
you with something that's muchmore powerful to work with, like
I think many of thesedistinctions are. So what do I
want from you? Listen deeply tothis episode, it literally could
(06:28):
change all the relationships youhave in your life. Listen
deeply, pay attention, like andpay attention, right? That's our
Okay, so let's dig in. So I'mgoing to kind of start with you
podcast.
in a way that I start with myclients doing an in person
workshop on looking at thistopic. So, what I would ask you
to do right now is to reflect ona couple of relationships you
(06:50):
have in your life. And inparticular, I would say in your
mind's eye bring up someone thatyou say, you know, what I trust
this person was someone that Ireally trust in the way that you
understand trust now. And then Ialso want you to think about
someone that you don't trust orthere's distrust there, okay? So
think about these tworelationships, bring them up in
(07:13):
your head.
So first of all, I get thepeople's names as you already
have because you conjured themup, you know what their names
are? I want you to answer acouple just basic questions as
we begin this conversation.First one is this, when you look
at each of these, why have youchosen to trust this person and
or distrust this other person?And I use that language on
(07:35):
purpose, I'm going to claimsomewhere along the way you
chose to trust them or not trustthem, it didn't just happen to
you, okay? So first question,why have you chosen to trust or
distress? And so look at, youknow, is it some actions they've
taken with you? Is it somethingabout their character, something
about them?
You know, who they are, soactions are who they are? That's
(07:57):
the first question. Second one,is this as a result of whether
you trust or don't trust? Howhas that changed your actions
with them? So because you'vebuilt trust, how has that
changed the way you behave? Whatpossibilities is that created?
And then because you've at somepoint chosen to distress this
person. How have you behavedrelated to that? So I want you
(08:20):
thinking about this and I'm notgoing to give you a ton of time,
but just pay attention to whatcomes up around that. And so,
now that you've got these tworelationships that probably are
very different from a thinkingperspective, from a how you feel
perspective, from the way yourbody responds, perspective,
right? Bringing in all threeelements language, emotion body.
(08:42):
Let's now look at what is trust?
Okay, so borrowing thedefinition from Charles and The
Thin Book of Trust, here it is.Trust is choosing to risk making
something you value vulnerableto another person's actions.
Choosing to risk makingsomething you value, vulnerable
to another person's actions. Sosome words may jump out to you
(09:06):
there but for me, it's risk.Anytime you're choosing to trust
someone, person or organizationgroup, anybody. We're risking
something that's a value to us.And so trust is a topic that's
so critical, because it requiresus to risk. If you're unable to
risk anything in your life,you're not going to have trust
(09:27):
and it's going to have an effecton the quality of your life. So
let's talk about how do we knowwhen to risk something.
And so this is the powerfulframework we use here it is. We
say it this way we say trust isan assessment you make, remember
assessments, their judgments,perspectives based on the
(09:49):
observer you are. So it's anassessment you make of someone
else in four key domains, andhere they are. Mirror sincerity,
their competency, theirreliability in care, that's the
framework. You're assessingsomeone with regard to their
sincerity, competency,reliability and care. So what do
(10:12):
we mean with each of this? I'lltalk a little bit about it now
may add to it as we go, but whatsomeone's sincerity? They're
probably thoughts that came upfor you that it's their honesty,
their truthfulness, maybe howtransparent they are. Make
sincerity can be measured, whenwe see someone says the same
thing consistently over time. Wecan measure sincerity by
(10:34):
watching their actions and makesure their actions line up with
what they've said.
So there are a number of ways wecan measure sincerity and I
often will talk about, most ofus think we have a really good
sincerity meter or we often Ioften call that your BS meter.
And I think many of us if we'reattuned to that we really do.
We're listening and payingattention for someone sincerity.
(10:55):
Now, I also like this definitionof it. Sincerity is when someone
else's public conversation, whatthey say out loud, aligns with
or matches their privateconversation. So they are in
alignment. In other words,they're not saying one thing out
loud and then thinking somethingelse in their head. So often
(11:16):
people will get in troublearound this element, when people
Well, I think they have a hiddenagenda that's fundamentally
will say.
about sincerity, in many ways.And so, again, I want to tie
this back to the idea of risk,right? Because can you ever
access someone else's privateconversation? You can't, no one
(11:37):
else can get in your head andhear your voice. So it's
fundamentally about making anassessment judging someone in
one of the four domains, whichis their sincerity and saying, I
think what they're saying outloud aligns with what they're
thinking in their head. Now,this is also really important.
I'm just going a little deepright away here and that's okay.
We can't access someone else'sprivate conversation.
(11:59):
But what I'm not saying here foryou, is you need to share all
your internal thoughts thatcould be really dangerous, and
we can make a mess. I mean, ourthoughts just come and go, day
to day mind do, right? I amsaying though, when you speak
publicly, it has to align withwhat's going on privately or you
run the risk of someone judgingyou as insincere. Okay, so
(12:21):
that's sincerity. The secondcompetency, in short, what's
your skill set. Can you do whatyou say you're going to do with
this other person or can they dowhat they say they're going to
do with you? Are they competent?Do they know how? So remember,
episode before last we talkedabout competency is built
through learning, which happensthrough time and practice.
(12:44):
So if you want to know ifsomeone's competent, ask them to
demonstrate it. You're notnecessarily and you're not
really competent, if you've justread an article on something. So
it's about demonstrated actionshows competency, that's the
second one. Reliability, that'sthe third one, are they
reliable? So if you're worried,so when I talk about this, like
dependable, they've got a goodtrack record, they do what they
(13:05):
say. And so that's people arepointing at reliability, the way
we talk about the way I talkabout it is, they consistently
keep their promises with you,when they give you their word.
And, or when they know, theycan't keep a promise with you,
they let you know as soon aspossible, and they renegotiate
it or take care of the promise.
So in doing so, and having thatconversation, they're taking
(13:27):
care of trust, and they'retaking care of the relationship,
okay? The last one is care,which Charles offers might be
one of the most important ones.And we'll talk about that a
little bit but what does caremean? It means I know they have
my best interests at heart aswell, or I believe I assess
judge, they have my bestinterests at heart as well, not
(13:47):
just their own. So again, thatkind of that piece around
someone that's selfish,perceived as selfish only out
for themselves has that hiddenagenda, right?
It's often a care issue. I don'tthink you care about me, okay.
And so this one I find care isthe way we demonstrate that in
our relationships, I find reallyinteresting because I think this
one can be the widest rangingrepertoire of behaviors if you
(14:12):
will. The word I often use whenI'm doing a workshop is it's the
squishiest one. It's the hardestone to put your fingers on. I
literally have had a clientbefore say I don't trust my boss
and I ask why? And they will saybecause they don't say hello to
me in the more in the hallway inthe morning. That's an act of
care, all the way up to are youtaking care of my career through
helping me develop my career andmeet my goals? Are you taking
(14:37):
care of my money? So again, backto remember, it's choosing to
put something at risk and makingsomething you value vulnerable.
And so care is such an importantdimension of that, do I believe
So it's a two way street. And asa matter of fact, if you get
you fundamentally have my bestinterests at heart alongside of
into this topic and start to diginto what you begin to realize
yours? And it reminds me of anexpression that kind of begins
to tie these together, at leasta couple of them. I don't care
(14:59):
how much competence see, until Iknow how much you care. I think
that's what Charles is pointingat. What I've learned around,
why care can be maybe the firstthing and the most important
thing around trust. So a fewother things about this. Now you
have the four domains, it's atwo way street. Remember, it's
an assessment. So not only areyou assessing them to know, hey,
(15:21):
can I trust them? They're gonnabe assessing you as well,
hopefully using the same framework.
is that as each party is makingthose assessments. If they go
negative, or really positive butif they go negative, and one
(15:43):
changes their actions. It oftencan start to create distrust in
the other who then reacts withtheir behavior. And so it almost
has a spiral down effect. Versusare actually in addition, it can
go the other way, if we beganto, in a relationship to really
build trust, then I open upmore, I listened better, I put
(16:03):
my guard down, which you thensense and pick up on, and it
begins to expand and build uponitself, okay.
So back to the framework, thefour domains, in a simplistic
way. I would say you have areason to trust another person,
when you positively judge themand all four of those areas in
your life. There's a reason youcould trust them, okay. If one
(16:26):
of them starts to go negative,or multiples of them, then you
have legitimate grounds, I wouldsay to distrust someone, okay.
And so that's the simplisticversion, I would say, you know,
in your relationships, in yourlife, you have grounds. I'm
saying this on purpose, you havereasonable grounds to trust them
doesn't mean you will, or youhave grounds to distrust them,
(16:49):
doesn't mean you'll necessarilyfollow that, as well.
So when I'm talking about thistopic, I see, you know, there
are times and places in which todistrust others, that's okay.
It's actually prudent and smart.And then there are times where
you want to trust, okay, a fewother dimensions of this, and
then we'll get to kind of somepoints in terms of the way this
plays out. We talk a lot aboutthe difference between what we
(17:11):
call simple or basic trustversus authentic adult trust.
The framework I'm giving you isabout authentic adult trust and
what does that means? It meansas an adult human being about to
get into relationship withsomeone else. I go in with my
eyes wide open, knowing thatsomewhere along the way, because
of life circumstances, I or youmay do something to damage that
(17:35):
trust.
And hopefully, we will build itenough that we will do the work
to repair it that's authenticadult trust as open. Basic or
simple trust is the trust of atoddler or three, four or five
year old, it's you got it tillyou break it. And then once you
break it, it's gone. So I thinka simple or basic trust is
(17:55):
almost like an on off switch,like a light switch, very
binary. And what I think is thatdoesn't work in our complex,
complicated, crazy world today.It just that definition isn't
robust enough to meet thedemands of today's world final
belief. So that's why I want tooffer you this idea of authentic
adult trust. Because I thinkit's a framework that can help
(18:17):
us navigate this criticallyimportant area in our lives,
having strong trust in all ofour relationships, if possible.
And then finally, what I'll say,as we begin to wade further into
this is just what does this dofor us. I think when we begin to
use this framework to judge andwe can then take actions based
(18:38):
on that. And remember, often theaction is conversational action.
So, when I realized that I don'thave the trust, I want in a
relationship back and go have aconversation with someone to
address it, deal with it, andhopefully to rebuild it. And or
continue to build it andstrengthen it in a way because
we can not talk about it. So I'mgoing to touch on something
(19:00):
right now that I think isimportant. It's interesting.
When I ask people in workshops,or coaching them is trust
important, they say it'scritical. It's number one.
And then I might ask, so howmany of you are actively talking
about it in your relationships,and almost no hands go up? I
find it almost shocking thatsuch a critical topic, in our
relationships in life, and we'renot talking about it. And so
(19:21):
those conversations arecritical, in order to design the
kind of relationships I think wewant. And one quick tidbit what
I found with most people's it'sa loaded word to go to someone
to tattled. Trust you feels it'sscary, it's hard. I've done it a
few times and it is very scary.It's a difficult word to use,
because it often comes with thisnotion of oh, you're calling me
(19:44):
like I lack morals or I lackcharacter.
And it's really not that in away, what I'm offering you as a
But in addition to that, where Ibegan to get into is we've got
definition where we can kind ofoperationalize trust and use it
to bring it out of thebackground as something we're
more effectively. So why do Ibring that up because the four
not talking about, but we fullyunderstand how critical it is.
distinct domains of sincerity,competency, reliability. Care
give us the ability to use thosewords to point to our distrust.
And we've got to bring it intothe foreground and talk about it
(20:06):
I think saying to someone, I'm alittle concerned about you being
fully truthful or transparentwith me might go over better
than I don't trust you, thatprobably shuts the conversation
down, or I might address theissue and say, no to this
competency challenge is to Idon't trust you, and we can
develop your skills. So I hopethat makes sense.
(20:38):
and deal with it and address itin healthy productive ways,
okay. So this is often the pointI make last when I'm doing a
trust workshop because a lot ofthe attention is around, do I
trust others? But you rememberour podcasts, Wake Up and Pay
Attention. First and foremost,we've got to look at ourselves.
So if you're a person out therethat wants to be judged as
(20:58):
trustworthy, which whenever Iasked that every hand in the
room goes up. Yes, I want peopleto trust me. What do you have to
do? It's like the pop quiz.
Here it is, do all four of thosethings, impeccably, demonstrate
them impeccably in your life, besincere, be competent, be
reliable, and show care. Sothese have nuances and
(21:20):
intricacies to them. But that'sthe simplistic version of it.
Speak the truth, okay. Whenyou're not competent, say I
don't know or say here's what Iknow, here's what I don't know.
Be reliable, take care of yourpromises and then show care. And
that's an area where it variesfrom person to person. So you
might have to find out how do Ishow care to this person, it's
(21:41):
different than to anotherperson. Recently, I've been
speaking with groups about it'salmost like that book Love
Languages where you speak tothem in their love language, not
yours. Hopefully, that makessense.
Take the actions to show thatyou care, and they will
positively assess you in thatarea. Here's the catch to as I'm
talking about this, some of youmay already be going wow, I've
(22:02):
done some things that no wonderthis person doesn't trust me, or
they don't think I'mtrustworthy. When you realize
that, what can you do? Goapologizing, clean it up. I'm a
huge fan of keepingrelationships clean, where
there's nothing in between us,especially as it relates to
trust. So right now, if yourealize you've been doing some
things in a particularrelationship, go clean it up and
(22:24):
use this framework to clean itup. In fact, that's going to be
part of the homework if youchoose to tackle it in that way.
So let's talk about some moredimensions in terms of how this
often plays out in our lives. Itleads in many ways are kind of
like my other episodes, don't dothis. It's kind of the thing.
I'm giving you the example, itdoesn't work well, okay. So
let's see, they impact oneanother, they play together,
(22:48):
they're not just discretelyseparate. So sincerity,
competency, reliability and carekin as things start to unfold.
And if distrust starts to creepin, it can often cause us to
question others. So an exampleof that might be let's imagine
that someone in your life is notkeeping their promises
consistently. So theirreliability starts to go down
for you, and you start to pullback your trust a little bit,
(23:09):
okay?
And then you start to realizethe next time they make a
promise. Now, you might start toquestion their sincerity, okay,
now you're going, Oh, I don'tknow if this time they're really
being truthful about thatpromise. Or maybe you start to
question their competency, maybetheir inability to be reliable
is connected to the fact thatthey don't know how. And here,
(23:30):
let's bring in sincerity, andthey're not willing to admit
that they don't know how. So nowwe got three playing together or
it might conjure up the notionof like their lack of
reliability and keeping promisesis that they don't care to give
you a full ethic, they don'tcare to give you their full best
engagement, in terms of doingwhat they said they do. So you
think they don't care enough tofollow through.
(23:52):
So you can begin to see howthese pieces play together. I
want to pause here for a secondand pick up something that I
didn't pick up before that Ithought I had already. But
that's talking about is theauthentic adult trust in basic
and simple trust, being blackwhite on off, which doesn't work
and it's more about eyes open. Iwant to talk about the word
(24:16):
extending, okay, I think it'simportant to bring this up now
because I didn't bring it upearlier. It's not about black
white on off, either you have itor you don't. It's about using
this framework to judge thosefour dimensions. And then you
can decide how much of yourtrust you want to extend to
another person. So you can give25%, you can give 50, you can
(24:39):
give 75, 80. I think of it on aspectrum almost.
Here's this relationship. It'sbeginning. I'm judging these
areas, I'm having positivejudgments so I can extend some
of my trust, okay. And then asthey show repeatedly, those four
dimensions are continued to bepositive, I can extend more my
(25:00):
trust. And of course, that willdepend right upon what you're
risking or how much you want torisk. But it's all about, I want
you to understand this conceptof it's like, choosing to extend
your trust to someone else,versus just giving them all or
nothing. What I found a lot oftimes in is that many people
(25:21):
because of their history withtrust, whether it's been good or
bad, they polar orientation toit.
So there's someone thatimmediately right away, will
give their trust. With almost noevidence, which can be very
naive and get you burned and getyou betrayed, or be careful of
that. Or if they have beenburned a lot in life, then it
almost is like, you're gonnahave to jump through hoops for
(25:43):
me to ever be willing to giveyou any of my trust. And so that
kind of I think comes from thison off black white template that
I don't think works well. I wantyou to have this authentic adult
template is all about to beingchoosy about how much and when
to extend your trust. So I hopethat piece makes sense as well.
Few other things, you can trustsomeone in one domain, one of
(26:05):
the four and not another, okay.
You don't have to right humanbeings off when they mess up as
it relates to trust, okay.Example I think about is maybe
you've got somebody in your lifethat is fantastic at planning
parties and putting togethersocial events. And they do all
four of those well around thatthey're sincere, competent,
reliable, and they really care,they throw a great party. But
(26:26):
you find that perhaps you findthat maybe they're not the
person you want to givefinancial advice from, okay,
because let's say they're notcompetent to and from your
standard. They don't seem tocare about what they do with
their money. But you don't haveto write that human being off,
what you can do is if theinstance calls for extending a
lot of trust because it's aroundplanning a party and carrying
(26:48):
that upgrade, I trust you.
If it's around giving financialadvice, you either don't ask
them for it or if they offer it,you just let it go in one ear
out the other or you find thecompetent, qualified financial
adviser for that aspect of yourlife. So I hope that piece makes
sense as well. Here's anotherone. We often confuse liking
someone with trusting someone oreven loving someone with
(27:11):
trusting someone don't collapsethose they're not the same
thing, even respecting. While itmay be connected to one of the
dimensions of trust, you canrespect someone and not
necessarily trust them, okay. Soagain, we got to be more nuanced
but let's get back to liking orloving. Can you love someone and
not trust them? Sure, or notextend your trust and in
particular, absolutely. Imaginethis. Imagine if your 10 or 11
(27:34):
year old son or daughter comesto you and says, you know what,
dad? I have decided that I amreally ready to drive the car.
I've been watching you drive. Ilike our car. I've been watching
my friends that we've beentalking about driving, and I
think it's time so can I pleasehave the keys, I'm going to take
the car, go visit my friend,Joe, and we're gonna hang out
for a few hours. You startlaughing they may not get all
(27:56):
that other mouth. Say no, it'snot gonna happen. I don't trust
you. And they say what do youmean, you don't trust me? I
thought you love me? If you loveme, you'll trust me. No, it
doesn't work that way and youcould probably think of
examples, topic that made upexample, but you can think of
examples maybe with your spouseor important person you're in
relationship with. To be morediscerning, you can extend your
(28:18):
trust in one area to them, butnot necessarily in another.
And I know as I say that outloud, I think about that can
open up some interesting,tricky, dicey, scary
conversations, I get it. Butwhat I would guess is that right
now you're already acting out ofany distrust you have. But you
may not be doing it in a veryopen way. You may be like
saying, let me do this. Let medo that and then when they say
(28:40):
why don't you trust me? So it'snot about that, it's just this
or this. So you give themexcuses, when it really is about
distressing, and we just don'thave the emotional strength, or
the courage to talk about it.Oh, crap. I would also say this
also really important. Don'tgeneralize your trust or
distrust across a whole group ofpeople, right?
(29:02):
Be careful about how you makeassessments and extrapolating
those to other groups of people.So what are classic examples?
You can't trust a politician,right? We all are like, oh, of
course not. I don't care if it'sDemocrat or but you just can't
trust a politician. Well, theremay be some grounding in that
assessment with somepoliticians, but not necessarily
all of them. So be careful thatlike preconceived assessment or
(29:24):
prejudice is an influencing yourlack of trust, and you miss out
on somebody wonderful, right?Often, here's a more dicey one
but we don't trust people, wholegroups of people based on
backgrounds. The country theycame from, skin color, you name
it, ethnic groups, whatever. Wewant to call those groups,
(29:45):
sexual orientation groupsbecause of that, right?
And I'm going off on a tangenta little bit here, but be
careful not to generalize yourtrust or distrust based on that.
It's a person to personsituation where we can use this
framework, go in with our eyesopen, have a healthy approach to
trust and then decide how muchcan I extend along the way. Let
(30:07):
me give you more as these fourareas are positively assessed.
Let me pull back when I need toand I'm having conversation with
you about it all along the way,okay, I already started talking
about this, but let me touch onit again, what I've found in my
relationships. I'm reallylooking hard at it is this power
of distrust, I think goes thesame way with trust.
(30:29):
But when any of those start togo negative and I start to
distress, which for me is oftensort of pulling back a little
bit being more guarded, maybe Idon't immediately respond to
their text or their call, maybeI don't fully share information.
So because of my distrust, Istart to behave in ways. And
then I noticed that they startto do the same with me and they
(30:50):
start to distrust me. And awaywe go in that relationship
dance, it's like distrust breedsmore distrust. Trust breeds more
trust and so it's such animportant topic that I think we
we just again, it's great today,to begin to dive deeper into it.
Take a look at what it is, andexamine how we build it.
(31:11):
Okay, the final thing that I'llsay I think I've hit on most of
the points that I want to makearound trust, is just that
neuroscience actually backs allthis up. And so Charles talks
about it in his book, I wouldhighly recommend, if you're
interested in this topic, thatyou get this book, it's a thin
book of trust, it's 80,something pages. It won't take
you too long to read, and itcould be a game changer could be
(31:32):
a life changer for you. In fact,I'm using it a lot of the time
with all my clients. It's thatgreat a book. But anyway, he
talks about it in one of thelater chapters about there
literally are different networksin our brain, depending on
whether we have trust ordistrust, or whether our
judgments are trusting ordistrusting. It activates
(31:53):
different networks.
And therefore it also causes thesecretion of different chemicals
and that's about as far as I cantake that conversation with you.
I'm not as well rehearsed inthat area and so I don't want to
say some stuff that I'm notsincere about about that. So I
would just advise you to get thebook if that's something you're
interested in. Before we go toDavid, let's spend a few more
(32:13):
minutes. And let's talk aboutsomething I think that is really
important, because I think we'veprobably all had this happen,
what do you do?
How do you restore trust whenit's damaged? Okay. Sowe've
probably all had that. And wewould like to be able to, and if
we haven't had this framework,or we don't know what to do, it
makes it tough. So let's firstmake this distinction, as I was
taught the distinction between abreach of trust and a betrayal
(32:36):
of trust. So just using thosewords, you can probably get a
clearer sense of what I mean bythose. So a breach is often
easier to repair, it's oftensomething that we perceive as a
bit smaller, something weperceive that we didn't really
intend to do, but it happened.So an example might be I think
of today's world, and how busypeople are and how many promises
they make, usually they're overcommitted.
(32:58):
And imagine you're going througha stressful time in your life,
and you dropped the ball on somepromises with somebody, and they
start to distrust you, thatwould be a breach. A breach,
like you can go to them have aconversation, clean that up say,
look, I'm sorry, I didn't intendfor this to happen. I've been
reliable in the past. Butlately, I've been dropping some
balls, I'm going to clean thatup. Sorry, I apologize. I'm
(33:20):
gonna clean it up and here'swhat I'm gonna do going forward.
Does that work for you? And theysay, yes, that'd be great and
then you repair things, okay?That's a breach happens all the
time, right?
And again, authentic adulttrust, where we have eyes wide
open, and we have a commitmentto repairing it when it goes
south. A betrayal often muchmore difficult. I think these
are my opinions to around all ofthis much more difficult to
(33:44):
recover from because you thinkabout the word betrayal. It
literally is like, I chose thiswith my eyes wide open, I chose
to betray you and damage trustin this relationship. And once
you know that, it gets reallytough. And so the automatic
example I always think of isinfidelity in a relationship
when one person cheats on theother, okay. And I find that is
(34:07):
often one of the hardest thingsto repair is a betrayal of
trust. The damage that it's donethere. And so with both of them,
let me just give kind of ageneral thinking or template.
I think we have to be willingwhen either happens to have
conversations about it. Call itwhat it is, we need to then talk
about the new commitments weneed to put in place for this to
(34:30):
be restored or repaired. Weprobably need to talk about when
we're going to talk and howwe're going to verify whether
the trust is getting rebuiltmore about, how will the person
that's been had the breachhappen or been betrayed? How
will they verify this and whatis the person that's broken it
willing to do? Okay. And then wehave to again, revisit trust
(34:51):
more often than we normallywould have and have more
conversations about it to assesshow are we doing and are we on
the right track?
So we have to talk about theintervals in which we'll do
that. Again, my experience hasbeen very few people do this.
But I think it can be a veryhealthy way to do this in our
important relationships. Andquite bluntly, if the
relationship is not thatimportant to you, a lot of this,
(35:13):
maybe throw out the window, itdoesn't apply or you don't want
to spend your time and energy.But in the important ones, I
think it is important to perhapsfollow a different way to do
trust. So a couple otherthoughts I have about betrayals,
okay. I think breaches can beeasier to repair an apology, and
so forgiveness and we move on.
(35:33):
But betrayals, here's what Iobserved is that the person
that's been betrayed at somepoint, if the relationships
going to work and survive, willhave to forgive the other
person, the betrayer, and mayhave to be willing to update
their assessments in those fourareas. At some point, you can't
hate not forgive and hang on tothose opinions. And you got to
(35:56):
be careful about Wiggin humor,this is human learning, the
person that did the betrayingmay need to learn and grow. And
so when we start changinghabits, and again, depending on
what was at risk, and how muchthe betrayal was. But we need
probably have a little grace fortheir growth, and that's going
to be person to person.
But you again, you probably haveto be willing to forgive at some
(36:17):
point, clean the past. And thenupdate your assessments as you
see the actions you want goingforward. Okay. And then as it
relates to the betrayer, you'regoing to have to have probably
old depending on what was atrisk and what was betrayed.
You're gonna have to havepatience with the person you
betrayed, doing what I justsaid. Being willing to trust
(36:38):
you, again to let this move intothe past and for things to begin
getting better and repaired,because you're the one that did
the betraying. Okay. You went ineyes wide open and betrayed
them.
And so I say it this way, youdon't get to set the timeline on
when the other person shouldstart trusting you again. You
(36:58):
just don't like you got to talkabout it and gently, maybe talk
about it as it unfolds. But youdon't get to set the timeline.
You're the one that betrayedthings. And let me also just
say, as we start to move towardsthe end of this, sometimes the
better answer for people withregard to the kind of betrayal
it is, is we need to end therelationship and move on. But if
(37:19):
the parties move on, I would sayit's important to reflect and
learn from which, whether you'rethe betrayer, or the betrayed.
And make sure that you stillhave a healthy orientation to
trusting going forward. And wecould again, go deeper here, as
I'm not even saying it out loud,I think of the nuances. But I
just want to put some thoughtsout there around how do we begin
(37:39):
to restore trust inrelationships?
It is possible, it really isI've seen it. It just takes some
work and energy and effort forsure. Okay. So as we close this
topic today, we do it like wealways do, what are the summary
of the key points, there are alot of them. But let me offer
you the ones I think areimportant. The definition of
trust, choosing to risk makingsomething you value vulnerable
(38:03):
to another person's actions. Youdecide how much you're willing
to risk, and how much are youwilling to extend your trust,
and you decide how much value itis and how much you're willing
to risk or extend, okay, butit's always choosing to risk
And generic examples are like,think about when we drive down
something.
the street, we're trusting thatother drivers are not going to
(38:26):
hit and kill us. If we'resitting in a building, we trust
that the engineers that built itknew what they were doing, and
it's going to stay intact andabove our heads, right? So
you're doing it all the timeanyway. You really aren't
trusting or distressing. So it'slike now just pay more attention
to it because it could be at theroot of a lot of your
relationship challenges. Sothat's the definition and then
(38:48):
how do you know? Whether totrust that's the four domains.
It's making a judgement, ofsomeone's sincerity, competency,
reliability and care, all fourof those need to be positive
assessment to your standard fourgrounds to trust.
And again, you decide how muchand when. And then if one or
(39:08):
more starts to go negative,we've got grounds to distrust.
We've talked about a number ofexamples of how we do this
poorly or do it well, so I won'trehash those. But I will say
this, I think we've got to bringthis topic out of the
background, something we know iscritical, but we don't talk
about our address. And get itinto the foreground and begin
addressing it, havingconversations both at the
(39:30):
beginning of new relationships,to put it as a target that we're
both shooting for and thenaddress it along the way as it
unfolds. And then we talkedabout a critical piece, which is
how do you restore it when it'sbeen damaged? And we made the
distinction between the breachand the betrayal.
And then finally, I'll bring usback to if you want to be
(39:50):
someone who is trustworthy,which most if not all of us do.
How do you do that? Impeccablydemonstrate all four of those
consistently in all yourrelationships. And when you
realize you haven't done it,clean it up immediately. So
that's it, in terms of thesummary. So what's your
homework? Gonna be broad, butI'm gonna give you kind of two
(40:10):
options, or you could do both.Now that you realize what trust
is, if you've created anydistrust in a relationship, and
important rush to go clean itup, maybe that's your homework,
your commitment, is to go makeamends and clean up any actions
you've taken, that betray any ofthose four domains, to repair
distrust. You'd be surprised atwhat that will do in your
(40:33):
relationships, then to that one,obviously, it's about looking at
yourself and owning youractions.
The other will be looking to theother person, if you have an
important relationship and youdistress them. It will be about
addressing that going and havingconversations using this
framework with as much dignityand respect as you can to point
it out, see if they see it, seeif they'll buy into it. And then
(40:57):
if you can reach agreement onhow important it is in your
relationship dance, can we thenagain, have the conversation
about what new commitments andnew action do we need to make?
How are we going to verifywhether trust is getting rebuilt
along the way? And then how muchare we going to check in at what
intervals should we be talkingabout it to make sure that it's
(41:17):
taken care of. So listen, that'sit. I mean, it's a very big
topic.
I just really wanted to share itwith you now, on the heels of
the leadership episode from lasttime. I want you to have the
most healthy relationships youcan have. So I'll close with the
way I speak about it again,trust is the foundation for all
healthy, effective humanrelationships, personal and
(41:41):
works. I really want you topersonally and professionally be
in strong, high trustrelationships. Be a part of
strong high trust teams and be apart of strong high trust
communities. So hopefully, onceagain, we've provoked some
thinking, maybe it's woken youup a bit and you'll pay
attention to this. And maybethere's some behaviors that you
(42:03):
want to commit to intake tobegin building more trust in
your life. So listen to WUAPAlistener, take care. I hope you
be well over the next few weeksuntil the next episode comes
out. And I look forward tocontinuing the conversation as
we move forward in the future,take care.
Well, my friends, that's a wrapfor today. I'm so grateful you
(42:24):
join me and hope you feelenergized by the insights we
took a deeper look at together.If anything resonated with you
or inspired new thinking, dropme a note. I'd love to hear your
biggest takeaway. Please join menext time as we dive deeper into
this never ending journey ofself discovery. Until then, be
well be present live fully andauthentically. Wake Up and Pay
(42:47):
Attention.
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