Building trust with other people

Trust - a subconscious, subjective quality in any relationship that could be experienced differently by each party, is hard to explain and almost ephemeral, like words in the sand.

There seems to be no way to guarantee the building of trust, and it is constantly exposed to erosion. Essentially it is about meeting expectations and often about matching values.

I naturally expect to build trust through working with other people, because that means I can demonstrate I do what I say I'm going to do, which I believe makes me trustworthy (, as well as showing the quality of what I can do). In return, I expect other people to commit when they say they're going to do something. Subconsciously commitment is an important value to me. I'm not saying I'm perfect, nor do I expect others to be perfect, but it does represent an expectation and a debit in any measure of trust if an expectation is not realised. Similarly fairness, honesty and keeping in touch are important to me.

If others are 'wired' differently to me, they may try to build trust through boosting my morale and expecting a warm response in return. This may not easily build trust with me. There are many different personal values, so is it possible to fully build trust with everyone (or even anyone without limits)? In our current collaborative world, though, it is important to build enough trust to work together.

Rather than ignoring everyone, or trusting someone with a huge expectation, one approach is to build trust slowly; effectively testing whether people are worthy of our trust. Professionals, such as coaches, contract expectations. That way there is

1. Negotiation and agreement of expectations on both sides

2. An escape route if a coachee's expectations of a coach (or indeed if the coachee by the coach) are not met, to reflect, recoup and decide next steps.

At work, a culture can make negotiation of expectations difficult, but not impossible. More likely is that we are just not used to negotiating relationships. All relationships have purpose(s); it might just be worth exploring what those purposes are, to check common understanding, no to mention how the purpose(s) will be realised.