"Do you trust me?"

I have an absurdly long, rambling draft (well, multiple, actually) of an essay discussing my observations and associated frustration with the inexpressiveness of the English language.¹ An illustrative example of one phenomenon that I discuss in that essay, which has been the source of much frustration for me over the years, is the titular question:

I find the word trust to be particularly fraught when used in a professional and/or pseudo-professional setting, as the different meanings of the word trust are easily conflated.

"Define trust…"

If we look at trust in the dictionary, we begin to see the problem, as there are multiple, different, plausible options:

As a noun

assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something

As a verb

to rely on the truthfulness or accuracy of : BELIEVE

and if we look at BELIEVE:

to consider to be true or honest

OR

to place confidence in : rely on

Using those definitions, we can project the original question into (at least) two more expressive options, one or both of which may be what is intended by the person asking.

• Do you believe I am behaving in good faith, with good intentions, and sincerely doing my best?
• Do you have confidence in my context-relevant abilities?

The most common response when attempting to tease out this nuance in conversation is resistance to even acknowledging that there are distinct senses of the question. A surprising (to me) number of people seem to believe that the answer to the second implicitly, necessarily matches answer to the first.

And, yet, I regularly encounter situations where my answer to one of the questions for a particular individual in a particular context is "yes" while the other is "no".²

An illustration

Consider the popular team building exercise of trust falls. In high school, I worked at a summer camp which also had one of those ropes courses that offer facilitated team building sessions. As a part of being staff at the camp, we were divided into groups and went through a multi-day session, including trust falls. In this particular case, there were two versions of the trust fall.

For the first, all team members are standing on the ground and members take turns falling backwards and being caught by one or two teammates standing nearby ready to catch them.

For the second, the person falling stands an a platform six feet above the ground and falls backward into a group of teammates, arranged in two rows facing one another, with arms outstretched ready to catch the faller.

The first version of this is fairly low risk and harmless, barring a gross size imbalance, even if a teammate in the catching role falters. The second, however, presents a more substantial challenge for some of us.

By 16, I was larger than most of my peers at 6'2" at 225 lbs, particularly compared to the rest of my cohort that day, which included a flyer on a local cheer squad, who was at least a foot shorter than me and half my weight (or less).

While I fully trusted the good intentions of my cohort and believed they sincerely intended to do their best, the readily observable facts about their relative size and strength—based on observing them working through the more individual components of the course—undermined my confidence in their ability to actually catch me in a way that was safe for everyone. And, of course, I wouldn't be sharing this anecdote as an example if that skepticism had not been borne out. Rather than actually catch me in the way that we had caught everyone else, they merely managed to break my fall enough to prevent injury.

"Presume good intent."

The most common breakdown I've observed in professional settings related to this arises when an individual or group expresses skepticism or feeling uneasy about a course of action and they are admonished to "Presume good intent," or "Give the benefit of the doubt," or "Show some trust," or similarly pithy and dismissive response rather than engaging the uneasy individual with curiosity. In my experience, such responses always exacerbate the uneasy feelings.

The problems with these responses are twofold. Such responses often stem from confusing an expression of low or uncertain confidence in a person's skill for an expression of belief that the person is behaving in bad faith. Responses emphasizing goodness of character or sincerity of intention cannot reassure a lack of confidence in skill or ability.

In the rare case where the expressed concerns are about insincerity of intentions, responding with admonishment signals that the skeptic's perspective is considered worthless, which, if true, is a poor basis for future collaboration.

Accounting for (contextual) power dynamics

A common mistake made by managers (including executives) is that they believe they're entitled to trust from anyone beneath them in the organizational hierarchy. Managers do, of course, wield power, including the right to make certain decisions, which, in turn, implies a reasonable expectation of deference. But such deference does not imply trust in either of the above senses.

Teams led by managers who misunderstand the difference between compulsory deference and genuine trust (in either sense) tend to be brittle and crumble quickly when they encounter adversity because they tend to require high-overhead coordination, which is inherently slower to adapt to changing circumstances. Managers who haven't earned trust in one or both senses are also much less likely to benefit from informal support from team members, which is critical in organizations working on complex, dynamic (read: interesting) problems.

It may take some managers a bit to recognize this organically, particularly if their early management experience was in an organization where they'd already established a baseline of trust. As noted above, managers undermine their cause by responding to a perceived lack of trust with exhortations rather than seeking understanding with genuine curiosity. If that exhortation is particularly strident, they risk completely alienating team members who may look to leave their team or the company.

1. It's not really a problem with the English language itself, but, rather, contemporary beliefs about how English is used. ↩

2. Admittedly, the case where one is confident in a person's context-relevant ability while not feeling assured of their good intentions is most frequently a situation where the person's intentions are otherwise contextually assured. ↩