Unlocking the 3 types of trust for more business success

Trust is the currency beneath the exchange of currency.

Trust underlies every business relationship and commercial transaction. It is generally understood that trust may (or may not) exist between peers inside a company, between an employee and their manager, and between entire companies (and institutions) through individuals representing those companies.

But since the essence of trust itself is often poorly understood or misunderstood, and also difficult to measure, motivated parties often struggle to increase it. When someone at work says that they don’t trust their colleague, their manager or their employee, what does that mean—and how can that relationship be improved?

Improving the dynamic starts with accurately diagnosing the problem. In such a situation, there are two kinds of trust: “character trust” and “competence trust”—and a third kind, “predictability trust,” which can inform how the first two are perceived.

Character Trust

Character trust means that someone’s character is believed to be upstanding, and someone whose character is trusted is expected to treat others appropriately.

At a minimum, such a person is expected to behave ethically and not criminally. Basic professionalism and appropriateness of behavior, which includes the lack of anything illegal, represents the bare minimum of character trust. Of course, stealing from the cookie jar (embezzlement) is a violation of character trust, but so is stealing credit for someone else’s work. A venture capitalist, who is trained to be highly selective, will very rarely invest in a founder if there is any suspicion around character trust.

Conversely, in a workplace culture characterized by maximal character trust, employees may expect that the leaders “have their back” and will treat them with empathy, respect, thoughtfulness and care. In such an environment, employees feel safe opening up to management (and vice versa) and exposing their vulnerability because they don’t expect it to be used against them.

If trust in someone’s character is lacking, it can be difficult to repair. But the steps involved may require some combination of a) the untrusted party demonstrating an authentic commitment to the values and behaviors that are perceived by others to be missing (i.e., “evidence of change”), b) a sincere attempt by the untrusted party to resolve or compensate for any damage that occurred as the result of past untrustworthy behavior, and c) the resolution of any past (and expected future) miscommunications.

Character trust resists quantitative assessment because—with the exception of evidence of criminality or perhaps quantitative 360/eNPS surveys or employee turnover data—it is often defined more by emotional reaction than anything else.

Competence Trust

Competence trust is fundamentally different than character trust. The essence of competence trust lies in the answer to the question, “Do you trust [Anita] to get the job done well?” More specifically, the questions that help you recognize a question of competence trust include: Is the job likely to get done thoroughly, properly and within a reasonable amount of time/cost? Will [Anita] make the right strategic decisions?

Unlike character trust, competence trust can be influenced by objective metrics in the form of business KPIs that are appropriate for that type of project or functional role. If you have data that shows that [Anita] has a track record of consistently building products on time, for less money than budgeted, that elicits a 5-star satisfaction rating from happy customers, any rational observer would be inclined to trust that [Anita] will deliver similar results in similar situations in the future.

To improve competence trust, someone must demonstrate that they are either more competent than others realize (by showing evidence of past capability) or that they will be more competent in the future than they were in the past. The latter could be achieved by showing that they have learned new skills that they didn’t possess before (through coaching, education and so on), or by committing to work harder.

As the joke says: “Trust your calculator. It’s something to count on.”

Predictability Trust

Trust is a form of confidence—a belief that someone or something won’t let you down. As such, predictability engenders a certain kind of trust in its own right. This kind of trust is agnostic to character and competence, to morality and effectiveness. It is simply and exclusively based on consistency of behavior and/or outcome.

Integrity is related to predictability because integrity represents an alignment between values and behavior. Since values rarely change, behaving with integrity represents an opportunity for predictability, and contributes to character trust.

In the Batman series, we can absolutely trust the Joker. Do we trust him to be of good character? Of course not. But we do trust him. Specifically, we trust him to be of evil character. We trust him to, reliably and without fail, sow chaos and death, to do his utmost to hurt others. Many movie villains—as well as real-life villains (criminals, fascist dictators and so on) fall in this category. We absolutely trust them—to do the wrong thing.

Do we trust Mr. Bean to act clumsily? And Superman to act honorably? Certainly.

Professionals who are predictable in their behaviors engender more trust than those who are not.

The Value Of Recognizing Different Kinds Of Trust

Many professionals conflate the different kinds of trust outlined above into a binary “I trust / I do not trust this person” mentality. But being able to identify the category of trust in question informs a different course of action to improve the relationship.

The remedies for a lack of character trust are very different than for a lack of competence trust (while predictability should be encouraged regardless). Given that, improving the level of trust in a relationship or organization requires an accurate and explicit understanding of the underlying forces that inspire trust.

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