Trust Isn't Earned

Borrowed

“It’s better to assume trust and find out that you are wrong than to always assume people are trying to screw you over.”

From "Amazon Unbound" by Brad Stone [Book]

Learned

Early in my career, or even when I was just entering the workforce, my thought on trust was that it was earned. When meeting a new co-worker, I’d wait to see that they could be counted on through our interactions and how they handled their work. It felt logical to me. Why put trust in someone who hasn’t shown you they can be trusted?

The thing is, this is a pretty tiring way to live.

I’ve since learned to do the opposite: lead with trust. Assume the person means well and is trying to do the right thing. With this mindset, trust isn’t built; it only erodes when someone acts without integrity, or with ill intent. What’s funny is that when you lead with trust, you find people often rise to the occasion rather than feeling they have to prove something to you.

My perspective on this changed most as I moved more into management and found I needed to delegate more. And when you don’t trust people, this feels almost impossible. So maybe it was out of necessity. But looking back, the old belief feels almost absurd.

Take the amount of time and care we put into hiring, for instance.

Right now, we’re hiring for an important role on our team and have talked to about 15-20 people without finding the right person. When we do, they will have been through several conversations, an assessment, references, and whatever else we put in front of them. It would be strange to bring them in and ask them to earn it. They come in on the understanding that we think they’re the right fit and we believe they can succeed.

What happens after that is up to them. Keeping trust looks like saying what you don’t know, naming a weakness (and acting on it) before it becomes a problem, and asking for help early.

And this is where I see people go wrong, often with the best intentions. They come in wanting to prove themselves. They say yes to everything, offer timelines that are a little too fast, keep a struggle to themselves because admitting it feels like a mark against them. Each of those is small on its own. Together they are exactly how trust deteriorates. The people around them start quietly adjusting, checking in earlier than they need to, building in a buffer without mentioning it. Nobody announces any of it, and by the time it’s obvious it’s hard to undo, because every new commitment now carries the memory of the ones before it.

Which is why this mindset matters for the person coming in, too. If you believe you walked in with trust, you don’t have to perform for it. You can hold your position and do a good job, and let that be enough. The people who try hardest to earn it are usually the ones who lose it.

In my personal life, I notice I operate with more skepticism, and as I write this, I wonder if that’s a contradiction. I don’t think it is. I don’t see anyone having to earn anything from me. The skepticism comes from a place of trying to figure a person out, what they want, what motivates them, why they do what they do. And in that way, that’s true at work, too.

It’s a fine line, or as I’ve heard myself saying a lot lately, “there’s nuance.” Either way, I’ve landed on this: trust is the starting point, and curiosity is the next step.

Thought

What would change if I assumed everyone I met this week meant well?

Who have I quietly stopped counting on, and have I told them?