That thing called "Trust"

Trust is a layered construct. In our common nomenclature, it gets used in every second sentence to describe anything from love, respect, confidence and host of other emotions. How well do we understand “trust” that is so pervasive in our professional, social and personal lives? I have researched it, tried to measure it and attempted to theorize about it as an academician. My present professional role requires me to leverage it every day. I think I understand it but more I encounter tricky situations that put premium on trust, the more I learn new stuff about its nuanced, context centric nature. Let me delimit the concept first before talking about some practical issues with it.

There are two dimensions of trust – benevolence (goodwill based) and competence (capability based). What this means is that one can simply trust someone (say a plumber) because he has confidence on the skills (plumbing) of that someone but at the same time he can have trust issues because he thinks the plumber may consciously sabotage his plumbing in order to earn more. First part is competence based and the second benevolence based. Trust can be thought to be some sort of a composite of these two dimensions.

For trust to be a relevant issue at all, there are two critical prerequisites –

1. Risk – There must be something of value at stake. This, along with environmental uncertainty, gives rise to the notion of risk in an engagement. If there is nothing at stake and everything is predictable, there is no need for trust. One can manage the situation by simple control mechanisms.
2. Vulnerability – Trustor (the one who trusts) is inherently impotent. If he/she has complete control over the behavior of trustee (the one who is trusted), then there is no need for trust. All outcomes can be governed within frameworks of hierarchy and contract.

Trust therefore is relevant only when there is vulnerability in the face of risk. Now, lets try call out some points that you may not have thought deeply of in the past –

1. Trust is not a reflexive concept – Trustee is not obliged to reciprocate to the same extent. Actually, almost all relationships are typified by this lack of equilibrium. To clarify, it is not the so called “trust deficit”. It is trust imbalance, which simply means one party trusts the other more than the other party does.
2. Trust as a choice – One may choose not to trust because he/she doesn’t want to get in situations that entail risk and vulnerability. This is in contrast to the conventional view of trust development as an organic process.
3. Is trust always functional – Conventional view extols the positive role of trust without caveats. Although trust does increase efficiency and efficacy of relational exchanges, there may be a threshold at which the marginal utility starts decreasing and eventually become negative.

While trust is obviously more virtuous than vicious, it is important to get the big picture. After all, our success as individuals and business professionals depend on it. I hope this piece provokes some small process that may lead you to the more fertile grounds of critical thinking and positive action.