Season 3 Episode 43 - Trust is NOT a Light Switch

“Understanding the anatomy of trust allows you to diagnose where it’s missing, and take a big statement like ‘I can’t trust this person’ to a much narrower scope, that you can actually take action around, in the form of a conversation.”

We often think of trust as a binary — either you have it, or you don’t. Either it’s there, or it isn’t. Like a light switch, we think trust is either “on” or “off,” with nothing in between. This extreme view of trust leads to some extreme behaviors. With a single violation, we can easily write off the possibility of trusting a person ever again. In this episode, Kari and Paul explore a more nuanced approach to trust that serves us in building lasting, authentic, trusting relationships.

In This Episode:

00:55 — The all-or-nothing myth about trust

02:57 — The price of not being related to the anatomy of trust

03:52 — How to strike a balance between trusting everybody and trusting nobody

04:49 — Paul shares an example of someone he doesn’t trust and Kari guides him in getting to the heart of that breakdown

11:56 — The problem with a blanket statement of “I don’t trust you”

13:52 — How to start conversations for trust

15:31 — The importance of supervisors sharing fundamental cares with supervisees

Quotes:

“Relating to trust as a light switch at best limits our potential, and at worst has us write people off completely, which of course wastes precious time, resources, and talent.”

“Most of us take trust for granted—because we don’t really know how it works.”

“Often, we delegate specific tasks and the person doing the tasks truly does not have the interests of the stakeholders in mind…because they don’t even know what those interests are.”

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Links:

• Kari’s Website

• Paul’s Website

• Kari’s Online Courses about Leadership Performance, Accountability, and Trust

• Paul’s Other Podcast

  
  

Acknowledgements: Our work is mosaic art. We read, study, and practice many philosophies, methodologies, and modalities of human performance, to ensure that our approach best serves our clients. We would like to acknowledge all of the thought leaders and organizations, whose ground-breaking work has influenced the TGN Consulting approach – especially Fernando Flores, Jim Selman, Michael C. Jensen, Julio Olalla, Pluralistic Networks,The Newfield Network, and the Strozzi Institute.

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