16 Sep Cultivating Trust
Here’s an example of what helps trust…
Ruth wrote me an email, letting me know a retreat I did on Trust sounded interesting and important … AND wished I had scheduled it on another day than Rosh Hashana.
She’s right.
When we looked at the large calendar we didn’t see the small print highlighting important days. Ugh. I hate when I do things like that.
But what was really lovely was HOW Ruth communicated with me: giving me the benefit of doubt, saying she knew I didn’t do it on purpose.
Her gracious feedback opened a beautiful exchange with someone I didn’t know in real time.
At the same time, her way of being reinforced my experience that life, that people in our world, are good people. Such a contrast to the vitriol and polarization that sometimes consumes the news.
It’s also an example of the importance of cultivating trust which is a foundational concept in psychology. It’s pivotal in relationships, team dynamics, organizations, and the larger society.
Research by Bowlby and Ainsworth has shown that our early relationships, especially with primary caregivers, shapes our trust levels in adulthood. Given that 3 out of 4 of us have insecure attachments, we can generalize that 3 out of 4 of us struggle with trust issues.
Let’s use this as a definition: Trust is a belief or confidence in the reliability, integrity, or ability of a person or system.
It’s based on:
- Predictability
- Consistency
- Reliability
- Benevolence: believing that others see the best in us
- Competence: the skills and capabilities are in place to act in certain ways
The opposite tends to erode trust:
- Inconsistency: when actions or tone of voice don’t match words; when there’s dissonance
- Secrecy or withholding information: without straightforward communication we’re left with ambiguity and uncertainty
- Unreliability: failing to follow through on promises or commitments
The ability to trust the authenticity and usefulness of information conveyed by others is, in a nutshell, what the contemporary attachment psychologist refers to as “epistemic trust.”
It’s the trust that what someone else is communicating is genuine and of potential value. The development of epistemic trust is deeply rooted in early caregiving experiences.
Epistemic Mistrust on the other hand, is a nuanced and multi-layered process. Insecure attachment styles “unconsciously” expect the world to be unreliable, misleading, or invalidating.
A person also tends to mistrust themselves, dismissing their inner signals and more easily connecting to the habitual patterned response of mistrust.
Makes it complicated, doesn’t it?
Mirror. Validate. Reassure.
A couple of years ago I started teaching this with our training groups:
- Mirror the situational “reality”
- Validate the emotional and psychological reality
- Reassure in the here and now that the person has the capacity to be with the situation, even if it feels overwhelming