Trust?

Of my last three companies I’ve worked at, “trust” has been one of the biggest values. Yet each of them has a completely different way of showing it: one turned it into a process, another into an outcome, and another into a belief. It got me thinking, though: what is trust? Maybe it isn’t something you have, but something you do.

If you’re reading this, hoping for some deeply researched essay … you’ve come to the wrong place. This is an essay of my own thoughts.

Expectations

It seems to me that trust is borne from expectation. We expect each other not to stab each other in the back, so we trust people to stand behind us—in the most literal sense. We expect that a car will stop at a red light or a cross-walk, so we can trust people to do that. We expect a lift to take us to the chosen floor, so we can trust the lift. This is trust. At least, the foundation of trust.

Without expectations, there can be no trust.

Each company created a different “species” of trust. Where outcomes were expected, autonomy thrived. Where overcommunication was expected, trust was free. Where processes were expected, control took over and trust was in compliance. All are valid, but they produce different kinds of agency.

Where outcomes were expected, it nearly didn’t matter how you implemented something, just that you did and it had the expected outcomes. Where a process was expected, it was a bit more tricky. Not only did you have to follow established (sometimes even poorly defined) processes, but you needed to follow it exactly. This left you little agency, actually, to achieve any goals—which are different from expectations.

Let’s talk about that a little bit, actually. What is the difference between goals and expectations? Others SET expectations on you, while you set goals.

Vulnerability

Once expectations are set, you get left alone to achieve something. This requires vulnerability by the people or organisation trusting you to achieve your goals and expectations.

Vulnerability is hard.

Some managers have a really hard time with this and tend to micromanage to ensure things get done. This is a lack of trust: either because they fail to set expectations accordingly, or they lack the vulnerability in accepting when things go wrong.

Not everyone can achieve the expectations set out for them, for a multitude of reasons. Maybe they lack the tools, the support, or the time. These things can’t necessarily be fixed by the person, but have to be fixed by culture or the manager.

Sometimes it is more insidious: the person being trusted just procrastinates or doesn’t give it the attention it deserves—maybe due to burnout or life or whatever. The person being trusted should communicate this … but this is where trust goes both ways. If the person doesn’t trust their manager to do anything about it, why would they communicate it?

In other words, vulnerability also belongs to the person being trusted. Saying “I don’t know”, or “I might miss this deadline” is its own form of courage and vulnerability. It’s the kind that can only exist when you believe you’ll be met with grace, not punishment.

Trust

These two factors loop and feedback on themselves, either building trust over time or eroding it. The foundation is creating and setting clear expectations and then being vulnerable.

Every trust, given enough time, will be tested.

Someday, somehow, someone will fail. This is as inevitable as the death of the universe. At this point, there needs to be a reset button for trust. And there is.

This reset button is called grace. No process or structure can create grace, it is the human-in-the-loop, so to speak.

Grace

The hard part about grace is that sometimes it isn’t deserved. Sometimes people really do break trust, not by accident, but by carelessness, intention, ego, or fear. Extending grace doesn’t mean pretending it didn’t happen or that there are no consequences. It means deciding that the relationship is worth more than the failure.

Grace is what gives trust a second life. It’s not free, and it shouldn’t be automatic. But without it, every failure becomes permanent, every mistake terminal. With it, trust becomes something living, something that can still be broken, healed, and broken again, yet still survive.

Maybe that’s the whole point: trust isn’t built by being perfect… it’s built by being human.