In all of my client dealings as an executive coach and CSR consultant for nearly 20 years, trust has been at the core of leadership, relationships, and business success.

Ironically, for all of its importance, trust is the one concept whose meaning people almost always assume and equally deeply misunderstand.

For most people, trust is seen as something of a Boolean choice – something that exists or doesn’t exist – to trust or not to trust, whether it is between two people or between a customer and a company. Yet we all know deep down that trust is far more complex and multidimensional than that. Trust is really a matter of degree and has different angles and perspectives.

I use the following model with my clients to examine the foundations of trust, how they inter-relate with each other, and ultimately how and where we can choose to make changes.

Model of Trust:

Trust is made up of three pillars: ability, sincerity, and history.

Our degree of trust with someone, something, or a company is determined by a sum of these elements.

• Ability: Does the person/company/partner have the skills or the ability to do what it is that they are agreeing to do.
• Sincerity: Does the person/company/partner have the desire/interest/inspiration/motivation to do what it is that they are agreeing to do.
• History: Does the person/company/partner have a record/history/pattern of doing what they agree to do.

Though these three pillars of trust are not mutually exclusive, in evaluating trustworthiness it is of value to tease them apart.

Putting the model to work:

We often get into trust issues when we assume the value of one or more of the unknown pillars based on the one(s) we know.

Example 1: We see someone’s passion for a program (Sincerity) and assign them (trust them with) a leadership role without knowing whether they can do the work (Ability) or have previous knowledge of their past efforts (History).

Example 2: Should we trust someone to be the treasurer of an organization simply because they love the work (Sincerity) that the organization is doing? Do they have any experience (History) doing accounting or book keeping? Do they have the computer/math/record keeping skills (Ability) to do the job required? Do they have the time (Ability/History) to do the work?

Example 3: We know someone loves us. Why? Beyond their words (Sincerity), what is their capacity (Ability) to love us? What is their history of expressing that love with us (History)?

Can we trust these people? To what degree?

Trust transference error: Just because someone is a genius at one skill and we trust them to always perform well at it, does not automatically mean that they will perform equally well in another field. In these cases it might be beneficial to specify our trust by skill category.

Example 4: We trust our plumber to fix our pipes, does that mean I can trust them to be alone in my house?

Example 5: Jana Smith is a star pro-basketball player with million dollar corporate contracts. Can you trust her as a good teacher? Business executive? Basketball coach? – Depends on the transfer of skills, interest, and experience.

Example 6: Your husband/wife/spouse is great about taking the trash out every night.  So why can’t you trust him/her to put the small forks to the left of the drawer and big forks to the right of the drawer?

Let’s play with some CSR/Sustainability scenarios with respect to trust:

Example 7: ABC company has a press release that they are committed to sustainability (Sincerity). Do they have the skills and understanding (Ability) of what sustainability is or are they hopping on a PR bandwagon (intention behind Sincerity)? What is their history (History) of behavior (are they conserving energy, reducing packaging, lowering their carbon footprint?) or is this Greenwash?

Example 8: XYZ company has a history of supporting the arts, community organizations (History). They have the money and resources to distribute grants to these programs (Ability). The company makes no reference to these activities and the official line of management is that they do not believe these efforts have anything to do with business or the bottom line (Sincerity).

Example 9: Acme company has been releasing CSR reports for 3 years (History). Last year the company reported having to lay off 2000 assembly line people last year due to budget cuts and pay package disputes worth $30million and ended up off-shoring the labor (History/Ability). The CEO took home a $64 Million dollar bonus last year (History/Ability). The CSR report says that their number one asset is their people (Sincerity).

Are these companies trustworthy? To what extent? In what skill arena might they be trustworthy an in other areas be not? How can they become more trustworthy? What does it mean to be a good corporate citizen? Where does PR fit into trust?

Next: How does a company or an individual for that matter build trust? destroy trust? or even restore trust when trust has been lost?

In this series we’ll explore:
Trust – Part I: Need for Trust
Trust – Part II: What Is Trust?
Trust – Part III: Build, Destroy, Restore
Trust – Part IV: Corporate Social Responsibility

A special thank you goes out to Julio Olalla who years ago taught me a variation of this trust model.

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Copyright ©2009 Matthew Rochte, Opportunity Sustainability℠ – Share with attribution

Opportunity Sustainability℠ is a Midwest-based sustainability and corporate responsibility consulting firm specializing in green innovation and seeing opportunities where others see burdens. Matthew Rochte LEED AP, an experienced, operations-based sustainability consultant, working with company management to navigate and realize the opportunities in taking their company green and growing sustainably.