Trust Part 1: A Forever Work in Progress

Ah, trust…

The concept of trust has been a challenge for humans for tens of thousands of years, and I’m also pretty sure research will corroborate the idea that trust has been an issue with living things for millions of years. Even the Dickinsonia, a prehistoric animal that researchers say lived 558 million years ago and could grow to more than four feet in length, probably had to deal with trust on some level.

Several years ago, I wrote extensively about trust on my personal website, publishing a series of essays exploring how trust brings together teams, companies, and communities. While I’ve touched on some of that in my recent blogs on Founder’s Framework, trust is so foundational to any framework for business-building, especially establishing an agreements-based culture your team members want to be a part of, that it seemed appropriate to revisit those articles, update them, and share them anew. Welcome to my updated Trust Series.

How Important Is Trust?

There’s tons of research supporting the notion that we’re social creatures, and I’ll submit it’s pretty hard to be social without trust. If you’ll grant me the assumption we’re social creatures, trust is probably the most valuable asset we hold as people, groups, tribes, companies, communities, states, and nations. Trust is… “almost everything.”

In my model, there are three primary dimensions of trust:

• Competency
• Character
• Connection

I’d be shocked if fewer than 90% (I’m fond of the number 90) of the readers of this article don’t believe we live in a world with major trust issues. That said, I suspect people, especially leaders, may not understand this as deeply as we need to. (It’s all the other group’s fault, right?) I’m also pretty sure that the age of information we're currently in (what I refer to as “Work 7.0” in my upcoming book, Work 9.0) has made it easier for us to more clearly see ourselves through our trust lenses, and the reason we have so much social discord is we just don’t like what we see.

Generally speaking, most of us aren’t big fans of lying, cheating, hypocrisy, double standards, hoarding, disinformation, misdirection, bad behaviors, and people or groups acting in bad faith — especially when this antisocial behavior comes from people we think of as belonging to “other tribes.”

We no longer collectively trust the institutions we have relied on for so long. As an example, in the United States, many don’t trust our:

• Federal, state, and local governments
• School districts and university boards
• Major corporations
• Media
• Nonprofits, charities, and other nongovernmental organizations
• History
• Science/scientists
• Institutional religions

You may be biased toward a member or a defender of one or more of these groups, but hopefully you’ll grant me that millions of people have trust issues with every single one of them. Ugh, right? If you want some proof, check out some of these recent Gallup and Pew Research Center surveys:

• “Americans Remain Distrustful of Mass Media”
• “U.S. Satisfaction Sinks with Many Aspects of Public Life”
• "US Pride Remains Near Record Low"
• "Trust and Distrust in America"
• "As Partisan Hostility Grows, Signs of Frustration With the Two-Party System"

Fact is, we’ve got a huge trust issue, and it's only gotten worse since I first wrote about this nearly five years ago. It’s almost as if we're in ancient Roman times and the powers that be (left, right, and center) are saying, “We know we have big issues, but let’s just hold a series of games and distract the people, the masses, from our realities.” It’s bizarre if you stand way back and look at it.

An Optimistic Light Shines Ahead

All this being said, I’m very optimistic in the longer term. We know what trust is. Making it easier to see, understand, measure, and build is the primary objective of this series of articles.

We also know each of us can make a difference. We can push for higher standards. We can start to reverse this trend by working on ourselves and leading by example. We can start by embracing our “better angels.” We can start by acknowledging our own faults and approaching the need to reverse this challenging trend with humility and grace.

We can start by endeavoring to be better and better versions of ourselves. We can start by doing the right thing — not just for us but for our families, our companies, our local communities, our states, our nations, and our world.

We can start by engaging in good faith. We can start by only making promises we genuinely intend to keep. We can start by admitting what it is we can do or don’t have the capacity to do. We can start by acknowledging our own challenges, our circumstances, and our weaknesses and being more accepting of others. We can start by admitting our mistakes and acknowledging our shortcomings.

We can start by recognizing that reversing this trend will require hard work and hard Work, as well as patience and perseverance. We can start by accepting every one of us is imperfect and evolving — not just the understanding that every one of us is an imperfect and evolving being, but accepting the fact that so, too, is every group of individuals.

We can start by accepting every one of us is a bit of a mess, while at the same time appreciating how wonderful life truly can and should be, and how we are all in this together.

We can start conversations with our friends and families and within our own groups and start to reverse this trend one person at a time.

The vast, vast majority of us are good people (research suggests less than 5% of us are sociopaths or psychopaths, though  not all of them are what most people would deem bad). We can start by respecting one another. We can start by genuinely helping and providing feedforward (what Michael Allosso refers to as being truthful, specific, and positive) to one another so we all have a decent shot at becoming better and better versions of the best versions of ourselves.

We have the insights, the tools, the competencies, the resources, the values, and the disciplines required to reverse this trend and move through this time to a better tomorrow.

Those of us who live in the United States are blessed to be part of a centuries-long tradition of sister nations that are built upon political systems designed to avoid the worst outcome (which would be us losing our unalienable rights). The road ahead is tough. It will require hard Work and sacrifice. But we will move through this.

Introducing a Series on Trust

When I first penned this series almost five years ago, it was the hardest series of articles I’ve ever written. Back then, I knew the series on trust would never be finished. I was certain I would come back time and again and refine each article. (And here I am!) I suspected I might even change core thoughts or points. That's why I titled Part 1 a "forever work in progress." The reality is not only is this series a work in progress, but trust is probably one of the oldest forever works in progress of all.