327: Can I trust you? How to Build Trust at Work

Aoife O’Brien [00:00:10]:

How do you feel when someone says, trust me? Is it something that makes you feel a bit cringe? Is it something that makes you feel like, why do they need to tell me to trust them? Is it something that makes you think, Actually, I trust them less because they’re asking me to trust them. This is the Happier at Work podcast. I’m your host, Aoife O’Brien, and today’s episode is about trust and specifically not at the general leadership, not at the organizational level, but really trust at that individual level. I know I talk a lot about psychological safety. It’s the foundation of the Thriving Talent Model. Trust and psychological safety are related, but they’re not exactly the same thing. And so for today’s episode, I’m focusing on trust mostly because I’ve spoken at quite a number of leadership conferences recently, and this is something that keeps coming up a lot again and again. Can I trust you? And so I want to talk about that in today’s episode.

Aoife O’Brien [00:01:22]:

To begin with, it’s really important to know the starting point. So where are we actually coming from? And for me, I tend to trust people by default. I will trust someone, but I know that not everyone is like that. And when I was doing the research for today’s episode, I, it also made me realize that maybe I don’t trust people in the way that I think I do. Because maybe I trust them if they have a history of competence or capability, or if they have a work history that makes me think they are a capable person, then I will by default trust them, but not necessarily, not always. But then there are other parts to trust, like, do you have my best interests at heart? And maybe I don’t necessarily by default trust that someone has my best interests at heart until I see evidence that they do. And so all of that to say that we, we as individuals may be starting from different starting positions. Some people may have a higher propensity to trust other people when other people are starting from a lower propensity to trust and their default mode is, I’m not going to trust this person until they’ve given me evidence the otherwise, you know, until they’ve given me evidence to the contrary that I can trust them, that I can believe in them.

Aoife O’Brien [00:02:51]:

So, turning this question back on you, when you think about trust, are you someone who by default naturally trusts other people, or do you naturally wait until they’ve given you a reason for them to trust you? And when we’re thinking about trust, what evidence does someone need to show you To demonstrate that they deserve your trust, there are quite a few models around trust, and I think this particular one that I’m going to share today is important for what I’m going to cover in today’s episode. It’s a model from Meyer, Shorman, and Davis, and it talks about three specific things that are related to trust, and those three things are ability, benevolence, and integrity. Ability answers the question: Can you? Actually do it? Are you capable? Do you have the knowledge? Do you have the skills? Do you have the experience to do something? Do you have the judgment that is required to execute on something? And going back to that earlier point, you may trust that someone has your best intentions at heart, but maybe you don’t trust them to do this specific task. And I think, again, this can be context dependent. So, someone who has an amazing amount of experience as an accountant, if they start in the marketing team, just because they have a whole load of work experience doesn’t mean that they’re going to excel in marketing or that they’re going to pick it up really quickly. So I think again, it’s context dependent whether you trust someone is going to deliver what they say they’re going to deliver. I think the nuance around the frustr— well, for me personally anyway, the frustration when someone says they’ll do something And doesn’t, and I think absolutely fine if it’s a once-off. If it very rarely happens, that is absolutely fine.

Aoife O’Brien [00:04:50]:

It’s understandable if a deadline needs to get pushed again. If it’s a you know, I’m happy to make a reasonable accommodation for someone if they need an extended amount of time, so long as that communication happens. But I think if there’s a repeated pattern where someone is not doing what they said they would do. Or doing it to a lower standard, then it calls into question their underlying capability to perform the task. And we lose trust. And it’s that specific area of trust around the ability, like, can this person actually do this thing? The second area then is about benevolence. And that is really about the intention behind what someone is doing. So do I believe you have good intentions towards me.

Aoife O’Brien [00:05:37]:

And I’ll share a personal example around this in a second. But I also wanted to highlight that in another model of trust, one of the dividing factors, I’m not sure how else to explain it, it’s on the bottom of the equation. So you have the equation on the top, and then below that, it’s divided by your self-interest. So are you doing it because it’s going to benefit you? Or is it benefiting the wider good? So how can I trust that you have my intentions and not just being really self-centered, essentially? And this is not about being nice. It’s about the consideration for the other person. So if our interests diverge, for example, if we’re maybe on competing teams, are you going to have your own interests at heart, or are you going to look at the bigger picture, the wider business, or are we now competitors, essentially? Competing for the same resources. If I give you information, what will you do with that information? Will you share information that I thought was protected in some way that I shared in confidence? Do you have any regard about what happens to me? So this ties in with this idea of care, and I talk about care in the context of psychological safety quite a lot. And how about, will you protect yourself at my expense? So, This to me ties in with the idea of, am I just going to get thrown under the bus when it comes to, you know, handing out blame or whatever it might be that I, I don’t trust you not to throw me under the bus.

Aoife O’Brien [00:07:14]:

I do have an example of this. It kind of loosely ties in with this idea, but back in my corporate days, I was running a pretty lean team and I was looking to get additional headcount within the team because I thought we were running on quite a low headcount compared to, and this is where I made a grave error, compared to the UK team. And so I went and I pitched and I followed the procedures and I thought I made a pretty good pitch, but that information that I shared was then taken and used against me. And the UK leadership team went back to the UK team, shared what I had shared, but obviously out of context, and said that the UK team needed to work more like the Irish team. And so they used that rather than as a way to give me more headcount, as a way to encourage the UK team to be more productive or to reduce their headcount. So it turned back on me and you can imagine the next time I was asked to contribute something along those lines, I was very reluctant. This ties in slightly with the idea of psychological safety, but this was really a kind of a one-on-one and do you have my best interests at heart or are you just trying to protect yourself and the margin and the bottom line? And that’s kind of how it ended up. The third one then is about integrity.

Aoife O’Brien [00:08:46]:

Do your actions match your words? So do you do what you say you will do? Do your commitments actually mean something? Do you hold yourself to the same standards that you hold other people? And I’ll come back to this point in a second because I have a great example to share on that. Are you consistent when circumstances change? Do you behave according to the values that you say are important? So this example that I have, it is more of a personal example, But, and again, you know, it’s going back years, but it’s something I still remember. I had an arrangement to meet up with someone and this other person was very clear and explicit. Do not cancel on me. I am going through something really tough right now, and I really need you to be there for me. So, I went out of my way. I was away for the weekend and I was traveling back quite a distance to be able to come home and to be able to meet up with her. And when I got home, I had a message to say that she had cancelled on me.

Aoife O’Brien [00:09:50]:

And so again, it’s this idea of the asymmetry of it, the asymmetry of the expectation, the lack of reciprocity in terms of the agreement. On the one hand, it was not okay for me to cancel on her, but on the other hand, it was perfectly acceptable for her to cancel on me. And so it causes a wedge. It really caused an issue between what she said or the kinds of standards she held other people to, but she wasn’t necessarily holding those standards for herself in how she interacts with other people. And you know, like I say, it’s something I still think about to this day, and I want to encourage you to think about how you’re showing up and the behaviors that you’re showing. And again, if we take those three things together. And think about how trust is showing up. So trust is not about being a trustworthy person or your intentions behind your actions.

Aoife O’Brien [00:10:59]:

What people don’t see are your intentions, and that’s often how we judge ourselves is by our intentions. What other people see are the behaviors that we demonstrate to them, and they judge us by the behaviors. And it’s not just They’re judging a one-off. They’re judging consistently over and over and over how you’re showing up. So you know, if you think about it like a bank, the trust bank, and it’s so—I was going to say—it’s so easy to keep putting into the trust bank. I think if you show up with integrity, if you do what you say you would do, if you have the other person’s interests at heart, and if you’re capable of doing. What it is that you’re supposed to be doing, you’re putting money or trust into the trust bank and you’re repeatedly and repeatedly and repeatedly putting it in there. It’s so easy to break that if you let someone down, if you don’t do what you said you would do, if the quality that you deliver is below the standard that’s been agreed, or if you throw them under the bus, if you don’t have their best interests at heart.

Aoife O’Brien [00:12:09]:

All of these things contribute to not trusting someone anymore, and it’s so easy to let that go. And I don’t want to dwell on the idea of repairing when trust is broken because that’s not what today’s episode is about. But there are different ways that we can repair with people, and it’s not it’s not always easy, and it’s not always the same. I think it’s it’s easier to. Make amends with someone or to rebuild that trust when it’s more to do with the ability side of things rather than the integrity. Because with integrity, it’ll always be in the back of your mind, is this just the kind of person that this is? Are they just the kind of person who tells lies, for example? Tying in with this idea is that we don’t always know Whether people trust us or not. It’s not as if someone is gonna come up to me and say, Aoife, I really trust you. Well, sometimes they do, or they’re not necessarily— this is probably less likely to happen, but they won’t say, Aoife, I don’t trust you.

Aoife O’Brien [00:13:19]:

They’re probably less likely to say that directly to your face. But what happens is they’ll tell you Less. They’ll check whatever they’ve asked you to do. They’ll have to check it and maybe double-check it. They stop relying on the promises that you made them. Maybe they’ll make other plans or have a backup plan. I know certainly with someone that I worked with previously, she let me down on a few things, and so I had backup plans in place so that when it came to the crunch and she did let me down again, I actually had something ready to go, which is a terrible thing to say. And I think that was just the final straw for me.

Aoife O’Brien [00:14:02]:

I couldn’t work like that anymore. Maybe they are seeking confirmation in writing, or they’re finding ways to work around you, or they stop challenging you. But imagine the amount of energy that this takes to constantly be checking someone’s work or not feeling like you can rely on them, so you have to work around them in some way. So it takes an enormous amount of energy and you don’t necessarily know that it’s happening because you don’t know that your team doesn’t trust you unless there’s a mechanism to provide feedback. But again, if they’ve given that feedback and it hasn’t gone anywhere, then that can erode trust as well. So thinking about yourself and your own behaviors and whether your team trusts you or not, and Again, it’s going to be hard to know unless they openly tell you that they don’t trust you, which is not likely to happen. I want you to think about the kinds of behaviors that you’re demonstrating to grow that trust, to build that trust with them, because like I said, people are starting from different points where some people will automatically trust you and other people, it will take them a while to build up that trust with you. But another important question to ask is to flip it and think, well, what reasons am I giving them to not trust me? Where are you letting things down? Where are you holding them to standards that you don’t hold yourself to? I saw this funny meme.

Aoife O’Brien [00:15:36]:

I know it’s just a meme, but I think it kind of captures a lot of what’s going on at work right now. And the meme was someone’s giant head on a screen and then a group of people sitting around a desk. And it was basically about the manager, when the manager wants everyone to come in To the office, but they’re not actually willing to come in themselves. It’s it’s again it’s a it’s a way to erode trust. Like I don’t trust that this person holding themselves to the standards that they’re holding the rest of us to. So they’re expecting things of other people that they’re not willing to do themselves, and those kinds of things are going to erode trust. So I would love to know, as always, what you think of today’s episode. Has it given you food for thought? Has it made you think of things in a slightly different way? And is there just one thing that you’re going to do differently after today’s episode? I’m your host, Aoife O’Brien, and you have been listening or watching the Happier at Work podcast.