CHAPTER 6
Trust: The Ultimate Gatekeeper
The striking client story that I shared at the end of Chapter 5 shows what happens when trust is absent in a work environment. The reality for most of us is that trust is rarely so binary. We trust some people some of the time about some things, and the same is likely true for how others feel about us. Most of us go through the day without thinking much about our trustworthiness. We take it at face value. It’s part of who we are, and we expect people to find us as full of integrity as we find ourselves. After all, we know our own motivations.
What does trust have to do with presence? Everything.
You may even wonder what trust has to do with presence. The short answer is: everything. Without trust, our guards stay firmly in the up position and true connections aren’t made. And while our own trustworthiness might not be top of mind, we are consummate trust assessors of others. We carry our own trust meters and use them to rate others on what we value personally, so then we know how far to let them in.
What Items Are on Your Trust Meter?
While we may experience trust similarly, what makes someone trustworthy varies based on our individual values and the qualities we weigh the most. Write down the qualities you associate with trust. Don’t over-think it; just write what comes to mind.
Trust is foundational to presence. That’s because you need other people to feel comfortable enough about your motives and credibility to invest in you as a person. The more trust, the larger the investment. And if you are deemed untrustworthy, you’ll have the opposite of investment—distance, suspicion, even sabotage.
The more trust others have of you, the larger their investment in you.
To extend the metaphor, if intention is your aim and connection your target, then trust is the atmosphere that carries your presence from Point A to Point B. Solid trust means clear skies, low wind, and a graceful landing. Lack of trust equates to rain and headwinds that knock your presence off course (or out of the game entirely).
Trust is a big concept. It’s complicated because it’s partly fact-based and partly emotional. We also have different trust standards for the workplace than we do in our personal lives. We tolerate more gray area around trust at work because we don’t always expect as much from people in the workplace. It’s assumed that leaders may act in their own self-interest or that ambitious colleagues will use others to get ahead. And getting a handle on our own general trustworthiness is tougher still.
Yet trust is yearned for in the workplace. When we meet people we can fully and totally trust in our work lives, we feel a sense of security and partnership. We also enjoy work more. Trust fosters friendships. Companies that report a large number of people responding “yes” in employee surveys to the statement “I have a best friend at work” have more engaged employees and profitable businesses, according to the Gallup Organization’s research.1 Whatever the norms or expectations may be in your organization, if you demonstrate that you are worthy of trust, you’ll have greater connections and more fulfilling relationships. You’ll have a presence that others seek out.
My goal with this chapter is to get you to think about your own trustworthiness first and foremost, and to realize that it is critical to a strong presence. I’m going to share some of the research that I’ve found helpful around what creates trust so that you can decide how you can augment your trustworthiness. For me, work on trustworthiness is most helpful as it applies to individual relationships rather than a faceless collective. I encourage you, as you read through this chapter, to think of an example of a relationship that could benefit from greater trust, more connection, or a stronger presence on your part. By working on trust as an individual endeavor, you’ll find that your overall trustworthiness rises along with it. With trust, your actions definitely do speak volumes.
What Creates Trust and What Squashes It Like a Bug?
Several years ago, I was introduced to the work of David H. Maister, Charles H. Green, and Robert M. Galford on building and maintaining trust in professional services firms. Their ideas were published in a book called The Trusted Advisor, which quickly became a must-read for anyone working in a client service environment.2 They do a momentous job of distilling a nuanced quality like trust into discernable actions that anyone can take. Their book validated my own approach to sales and client service over the years. And it exposed my culpability in relationships that didn’t go as well as I had hoped.
Most of all, what I find interesting about their framework is that it applies to nearly any work relationship you can envision. We’re all trusted advisers who rely on the strengths of our relationships to get things done. Influence has replaced hierarchy as a means to an end. Buy-in is not simply a nice-to-have. We have internal clients even if we never meet any external ones.
For this chapter, I am using their work liberally as an approach for building trust no matter your position, level, or work environment. Try it on for size in your world. I’m confident you’ll see that it fits.
What Does a Trusted Relationship Look Like?
Maister et al. describe a set of traits that people whom we trust have in common. Do these traits ring true for you? Trusted advisers:
— Seem to understand us, effortlessly, and like us
— Are consistent (we can depend on them)
— Always help us see things from a fresh perspective
— Don’t try to force things on us
— Help us think things through (it’s our decision)
— Don’t substitute their judgment for ours
— Don’t panic or get overemotional (they stay calm)
— Help us think and separate our logic from our emotion
— Criticize and correct us gently and lovingly
— Don’t pull their punches (we can rely on them to tell us the truth)
— Are in it for the long haul (the relationship is more important than the current issue)
— Give us reasoning (to help us think things through), not just their conclusions
— Give us options, increase our understanding of those options, give us their recommendation, and let us choose
— Challenge our assumptions (to help us uncover the false assumptions we’ve been working under)
— Make us feel comfortable and casual personally (although they take our issues seriously)
— Come across like real people, not like they are acting in a role
— Are reliably on our side and always seem to have our interests at heart
— Remember everything we ever said (without notes)
— Are always honorable (they don’t gossip about others, and we trust their values)
— Help us put our issues in context, often through the use of metaphors, stories, and anecdotes (few problems are completely unique)
— Have a sense of humor to defuse (our) tension in tough situations
— Are smart (sometimes in ways we’re not)
You may be nodding as you read these traits and behaviors. It can invoke a sense of calm just to think about these qualities. Often you can put a face to a description of someone who has been a trusted adviser in your life. Would others use these same descriptors for you?
Core Variables of Trust: The Trust Equation
The model outlined by Maister et al. in The Trusted Advisor is the “trust equation,” which is a veritable road map for building connections and influence in an authentic way (see Figure 6-1).
Figure 6-1. The trust equation.
SOURCE: David H. Maister, Charles H. Green, and Robert M. Galford, The Trusted Advisor (New York: First Touchstone, 2000) p. 69.
Let’s take the trust equation apart and briefly look at what the variables mean in our day-to-day experiences.
Credibility is in the realm of words. It’s about our content expertise and presentation of our knowledge. When we study hard-to-learn facts and figures before a big meeting, we are working on our credibility. It’s also about the academic degrees and the relevant experience a person has. It’s often where professionals focus the most because our society values accumulated knowledge and having the right answers. Credibility feels safe because it’s the most rational piece of the trust equation.
Reliability is in the realm of actions. It’s about whether you can be trusted to deliver the same way and at the same level over a period of time. Reliability is enhanced by increased positive interactions. The more someone sees us behave in an expected way, the easier it is to trust us as a reliable presence. One-off performances that wow us don’t carry nearly the weight of being consistent over time. This is why it’s critical for leaders to actively engage with their teams regularly rather than waiting for big events. We get a high score on reliability when our actions have shown that we do what we say we’re going to do.
Intimacy is in the realm of emotions. You probably found credibility and reliability to be fairly predictable. But when intimacy enters the room, things get shaken up. Intimacy is a tough concept to grasp in the workplace. We’ve become accustomed to (and comfortable with) keeping a professional distance in our interactions. It’s the all-business persona I discussed in Chapter 5. Yet our trusted relationships always include a level of intimacy. We have to be able to open up—and encourage others to open up as well—or the real issues will never surface. In discussions with those whom we trust, we use candor and full disclosure because we know in this trusted relationship we’ll be handled as friends and confidantes. Perhaps just as important, we also know that appropriate boundaries will be respected; therefore intimacy will be used to deal with the issue on the table, not to exploit the relationship.
Self-orientation is in the realm of motives. In the trust equation, it holds great power as the sole denominator. In my experience, this is exactly as it should be. When we perceive that people are putting their own motives above our own, we shut them out emotionally. Think of salespeople who will do and say anything to sell you their product. When you can see them coming, you run the other way (mentally, if not physically). Self-orientation is more than just selfishness. It’s being overly fixated on ourselves in every situation; it’s about our needing to look intelligent, have the right answer, push our agenda, or win at any cost. When trust relationships break down at work—or never get off the ground—self-orientation is often the culprit.
When we see self-interest coming we mentally go the other way.
Can You Measure Trust? (Give It a Try)
Maister et al. propose that trust can be measured like a scored equation. They suggest that you give yourself a rating of 1 to 10 on each variable of trust—credibility, reliability, intimacy, and self-orientation—then do the math and see what you get. In their examples used to benchmark trust scores, a 5 equates to a long-standing trustful relationship while a 1.25 is a low trust score. As an absolute number, this trust score may or may not be useful to you. However, on a comparative basis—using separate relationships or with the same person over time—it can be enlightening.
Calculate Your Trust Score
Do the trust equation for a specific relationship you’d like to strengthen. Give yourself a rating of 1 to 10 on the four trust variables (credibility, reliability, intimacy, and self-orientation) and then calculate your score using the equation in Figure 6-1.
How do you measure up? What variable can you enhance today?
Sold on Trust, Where Do I Begin?
I’ve found that in tough relationships I can be lacking on a number of trust variables. That said, there are a few themes that come up routinely in my work with executive presence.
First, pay very close attention to your self-orientation. And I mean your true, authentic, deep self-orientation. It would be possible to write an entire chapter on managing self-orientation; as a coach, I see this issue come up a lot. To manage your self-orientation, you’ll first need to understand it. Generally, well-intentioned people do not go into relationships trying to be selfishly motivated. It happens because we’re human and there’s so much at stake in our careers. Self-orientation is often a defense mechanism meant to protect ourselves against embarrassment, discomfort, failure, or even at times employee litigation. We have our own backs. And while it’s natural and at times judicious to feel this way, it’s also more transparent than we realize.
Self-orientation and intimacy have a ricocheting effect back and forth—either positively or negatively.
Self-orientation also has a “ricochet effect” with intimacy. We can’t be open because we don’t trust the other person’s motives. Or they hold things so close to the vest that we make sure to protect our own interests. And so it goes: back and forth, again and again—confirming and reconfirming our initial opinions.
One way to stop this dynamic and lower the impact of self-orientation in a relationship is to take a step back and ask yourself:
What could I do for the sake of the relationship that would help the other person, even if it’s against my own self-interest?
Someone has to take the risk first. And since you’re reading this book on presence, that someone can be you. You may worry about extending yourself, but as the old saying goes, “If you always do what you’ve always done, then you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.” One person in a relationship has to be willing to take a step for the dynamic to improve.
Acts of selflessness can transform a relationship. Think of a leader who forgoes her bonus to make sure other people get theirs, or a sales guy who tells you sincerely that you don’t need to upgrade this version of his product, or a manager who needs you but offers to advance your career to his own detriment. Acts such as these bring down walls and bust open doors. When they occur, you immediately reorient yourself toward the other person.
This extends not just to specific relationships you’d like to improve, but also to your relationship to others as a whole. It comes down to how you conduct yourself no matter the circumstances; in other words, your internal compass. Leaders who oversee teams of people can choose to orient themselves as a trusting/trustworthy person through a combination of their own presence and what they expect of others. There’s a Pygmalion effect at play: The research shows that people rise or fall to their leader’s expectations.3 To a large extent, if we expect others to be trustworthy and to act in a trusting manner, they will. If we expect them to take advantage, they will.
If we expect trust, we’ll get it. If we expect a lack of trust, we’ll get it.
For all professionals, there are times when a lot is at stake and it feels safer to operate from a place of self-protection than a place of trust. It doesn’t matter whether you are dealing with clients or coworkers. You have a choice to make about the presence you want to convey. Extend trust or not? Invest in the relationship or keep your distance? These small interactions have a cumulative effect on your presence as a whole.
Sometimes we find ourselves stuck in a relationship that’s not working. A common one is when the supervisor-employee dynamic has been damaged. Often, the people involved believe they have tried everything and yet the situation remains unchanged. Self-orientation—and mistrust—rises with each interaction. When you feel that you don’t know what to do next and the relationship is still important to you, ask yourself:
What action would I take if I knew it would be accepted and appreciated?
This question will reveal the myriad options that are still available. That’s because when we attempt to eliminate risk, we self-censor actions that have any chance of being rejected. But when you list all your options and consider each one’s actual risk, there are usually quite a few trust-building moves on the table. And sometimes you have to mind your internal compass and do what you feel is right, no matter the outcome. (Which, by the way, reduces your self-orientation big-time.)
Situations Where Trust Is Hard to Come By (and Where to Find It)
So far we’ve discussed trust in abstract terms. We all experience situations where building and maintaining trust is tenuous. These are also times when we want our presence to support us, so it’s important for our intentions and communications to be aligned. Focusing on strengthening trust in these tough situations not only helps you to get through them with less difficulty, but it helps you do so with grace and clarity.
Coming from a place of trust is a conscious decision. In every interaction, we can choose whom we want to be, and whether we will lead through our values or tuck them away in our back pockets. In the toughest of situations, we can be distracted into thinking that a Right Way prevails over our way because that’s what worked for someone else, or because we’re unsure of ourselves, or perhaps because well-meaning advisers recommended it. But the truth is, if you know what you value, you can usually find a path to effectiveness that supports whom you want to be. If you want to embolden trust, you have the ability. Here are my suggestions for how to keep trust high in typical work situations where it’s a struggle. I call them “trust tester” situations.
Performance Issues
Everyone wants to do well at work; everyone wants the boss’s approval. So when we have to let someone know that they aren’t performing well, it’s usually a difficult conversation. Most of the time, managers avoid these conversations so much that issues aren’t addressed until they have ballooned into major problems.
It’s best for all parties if the employee with the performance issue takes the feedback and improves. However, this won’t happen without trust on both sides. Here are some ideas to consider for both parties:
Managers. Employees will want to know what this performance issue really means. Is it a small deficit or career limiting? Is this the first step before being let go? Have you already given up on them?
— Discuss the performance issue with as much candor as possible. Don’t deliver feedback with so many caveats around it that the person has to read between the lines. Give the courtesy of specificity.
— Ask for the employee’s perspective to ensure that you, as manager, understand the full situation.
— Show how you have managed performance issues in the past with others (maintaining confidentialities) and that you have a history of helping people to improve.
— Offer something that, while meaningful to the other person, is not in your self-interest—for example, regular one-on-ones, mentoring, cross-functional opportunities, or outside training.
— Check in regularly to show that you meant what you said and will be consistent.
— Continue to assess the employee’s progress honestly, so there are no surprises.
Employees. Hearing that you are underperforming can provoke a knee-jerk, defensive reaction. Insecurity sets in. Your manager will be assessing how you take in the news and how you accept the feedback because it tells the manager a lot about the the attitude you’ll be bringing to improving your performance—whether, for example, you’ll be someone who can turn your performance around. You want to create trust so the manager knows that you’re committed and can do it.
— Resist the urge to list all your accomplishments or to defend your work.
— Ask for complete honesty and gently push back if you feel you’re not getting it.
— Extend an open invitation for the manager and anyone else to give you QFPs (quick feedback points) any time this performance issue comes up.
— Recap your understanding of the issue and what will happen next.
— Follow up by letting your manager know specifically what you’ll be doing to address the performance issue with measurable benchmarks, if possible.
— State clearly to your manager how seriously you take the issue and your desire to improve.
Corporate Reorganizations or Layoffs
It only takes a rumor for trust to implode when corporate change is afoot, and even more so when it involves potential loss of jobs. Very suddenly those “in the know” are pitted against everyone else who is waiting to hear about their fate. Even positive change is generally difficult to handle. We resist it at our core, and as we now know from neuroscience, there’s a biological basis. Our brains function most efficiently when we are working from the familiar.
When you are managing change on a team, or helping a company find its way through a reorganization, maintaining trust is crucial to sustaining performance, retention, and a positive culture. Try to:
— Establish the credibility of the leaders (including yourself, if applicable) who are shepherding the change process.
— Make reference to other, similar companies that have faced the same obstacles and pulled through. Keep a focus on what’s possible on the other side.
— Avoid overpromising or creating a false sense of security. If the situation is going to be uncomfortable and jobs will be lost, say so.
— Make the first cuts the deepest rather than continuing to trickle through layoffs. You want to avoid the proverbial waiting for the other shoe to drop, if at all possible.
— Show the sacrifices that top leaders are making personally.
— Encourage your team to ask for status reports at any time and promise to be as candid as possible. If you don’t know an answer, be honest.
— Give people as much information as you can so they feel a sense of control. Show that their lives are more important to you than your short-term objectives.
Failure
No one wants to fail, and no one likes to admit to failure. Yet we all do fail at times, and we can all learn tremendously from our failures. When people fail and try to cover it up, they erode trust. Leaders often do this through omission—such as abandoning a failed program and never bringing it up again. Everyone falls prey to the “hope they don’t notice” strategy at one time or another. But life has a way of exposing these failures eventually. So why not take advantage of the opportunity to increase your trust quotient by handling failure from a place of honesty and development?
— For leaders, it’s okay to fail, just not to hide. When something doesn’t work, bring it up, address what happened, and take accountability. Explain what you learned and state what’s next.
— For everyone, don’t wait for your failure to be called out. Take it up the ladder—along with your solutions for addressing the situation.
Competitive or Undermining Colleagues
We want to work in an environment where everyone gets along and contributes equally. But all too often corporations are set up to be extremely competitive, and there are fewer seats the closer you get to the top. Functional heads are frequently pitted against one another in a sort of psychic and physical endurance test to see who gets promoted. It’s no surprise that relationships between people who need each other to get things done can turn toxic when it feels like a zero-sum game. This situation is miserable for all parties and produces significant stress. Ironically, teamwork is one of the key skills required for promotion. So whether the friction is with a peer or a colleague in an entirely different position, it’s in everyone’s best interest to find a way to, as Rodney King so famously put it, “all just get along.” You may never be able to singlehandedly morph a relationship, but you can do your part to enhance trust. How to start?
— Make it a mission to learn about your colleagues’ motivations. The more you know about what makes them tick, the more context you’ll have for understanding their behavior.
— Share your perceptions in a nonthreatening way. Use “I” statements rather than “You” statements. For example: “I’m picking up on some tension. I’d like for us to find a way for us to work better together. What can I do to make this work?”
— Show your willingness to support your colleagues. Back them up in a meeting or call out their excellent performance. Talk up a colleague’s project to others. Be genuine! Offer sincere compliments, not flattery.
— Encourage regular interaction. Find ways to work together one-on-one to increase the positive impressions you have of each other. Consider starting with a “How can we help each other” meeting.
— If you find your way to an honest dialogue, own up to your part and anything you’ve done to impair the relationship. Take accountability—don’t defend your actions as a reaction to what someone else did.
— Keep talking. As Susan Scott put it so well in Fierce Conversations, “The conversation is the relationship.”4
Selling
There are multitudes of resources on how to establish trust in sales situations, and it’s not hard to see why—we buy from those we trust. The Trusted Advisor has a good chunk of material devoted to this particular topic with numerous ideas to try. As an entrepreneur who has brought in business worth millions of dollars, here is the process I’ve adopted:
— Start with the other person (your prospect). Ask what the prospect is looking to get out of the sales call. Spend more time asking questions and listening than talking.
— Learn everything you can about your prospects—their hopes, fears, and motivations. Find as many authentic commonalities as possible, whether personal interests, family, colleges attended, or people you both know. This closes the distance between you.
— Don’t spend a lot of time talking about your experience and credibility unless the prospect asks. Today, prospects do their own research online; if you aren’t deemed credible you wouldn’t be at the table.
— Use every exchange as a chance to demonstrate how you will act after the prospect becomes a customer.
— Talk to and treat prospects (and clients) as friends. Be equal parts informal and respectful.
— Be transparent. Welcome them to call anyone on your client list, whether or not you’ve given them as a formal reference.
— Never lie or overpromise. Tell clients what’s in their best interest, not yours. If you are not offering the best solution, say so. You’d be surprised how often goodwill comes back around.
Getting Hired
When we’re trying to get hired we are often circumspect in our interactions; we think it’s better to be safe than sorry. There’s a fine line between being memorable, yet not so far outside the norm that we’re not a good cultural fit. Few people go into an interview feeling comfortable enough to be fully themselves. At the same time, we have to establish trust so that people will invest in us. To do that, we have to form intimacy and lower our self-orientation. We must let our personalities out and be authentic. Having hired many people over the years, I found the absolute worst interviews to be the ones where the interviewee is holding back any comment that isn’t 100 percent positive, or is overly formal or seems to lack a personality. You don’t get enough of a sense of the true person to establish trust. On the other hand, if you focus on building trust, you will find that both sides learn more during the interview. (After all, you may be the interviewee, but you are interviewing the company, too.) With that in mind, interviewees should:
— Ask the interviewer what she’ll be focusing on; is this a general interview, and are there certain parts of your background she wants to explore? Come prepared with questions to ask.
— Find commonalities with the interviewer. Ask to meet other people on the team and do the same with them. Create an atmosphere that’s conducive to asking candid questions on both sides.
— Avoid playing games. Be honest about what other job opportunities you have on the table and where they stand.
— Be authentic about your feelings. If you are happy to be there or have followed the company from afar, let them know. If you have reservations, put them on the table.
— Explain the challenges you have faced (if asked). Discuss them openly and describe what you learned. Don’t say some version of “I’ve never had real challenges” or “My greatest weakness is working too hard.”
— Realize that how you follow up is part of the interview process.
— Extend a favor that is solely for the company, with no expectation of a quid pro quo. Send over a sales lead, refer a candidate for another job there, or follow up with an article about a competitor or customer.
I saved this one for last because, well, terminations are hard no matter what you do. No one wants to lose his job. When it happens, it’s often a surprise, even if it was fairly expected. When you are the person doing the firing, it can seem absurd to think that trust can be involved in such a situation. The difficulty is compounded because terminations are generally managed to mitigate legal risk: Say as little as possible, get the person out of the office quickly, and have them sign a severance document agreeing not to sue. Legal advice is based on treating the employee as if she can’t be trusted (or that she has possible criminal intentions). Having 15 minutes to pack up your belongings and then being escorted to the door does not leave a person with warm and fuzzy feelings.
I’m not an attorney, and anything I can contribute should not be construed as legal advice. What I will say is that I’ve never been completely comfortable with how terminated employees are treated, or how I’ve been advised to treat them in my own companies. I’ve made it an interest of mine to hear how other companies have managed to terminate employees and still treat them in a respected and trusted way. I want to reiterate that I’m not talking about the true bad seeds out there. The majority of people who get terminated don’t fall into the saboteur category. They aren’t dangerously inept. They’re simply well-intentioned folks in the wrong job or lacking a few key skills for success.
Treating people with trust is good on a basic human level, but there are business ramifications as well. It helps both the manager and the employee move on in a positive way. It negates some of the backlash from the people left behind who may feel defensive about how their former coworkers were treated. And it has even larger implications. When fired employees decide to sue a company, it’s often because of how they were treated on the way out. Here are some approaches I’ve seen help people exit a company with dignity and with the chance of a softer landing:
— Give someone early notice if you feel her performance is leading to termination. Don’t assume she will exploit the situation and stop doing her work entirely. Act as a mentor to help her find a more suitable role in another department or company, or encourage her to consider a new path.
— Offer to let the person resign on his own accord with two to three months of pay (either while continuing in the job or as severance).
— Hire the employee as a consultant on a part-time basis for a period of time to wrap up unfinished projects.
— Create a corporate policy of outplacement where terminated employees are given a desk and office as a base of operations or access to other resources.
— Make introductions to company recruiters who can locate a more suitable position for the person.
Finally, there’s another side to terminations, which is the employee’s approach and behavior. Nearly everyone will part ways with a company at some point—whether it’s a for-cause termination or a layoff, or to voluntarily accept a better opportunity. Here’s a universal truth that greatly impacts trust: People remember how you leave, more so than what you did before that. It may not be fair, but it’s true. You have an opportunity to build trust and respect by being helpful, contributing your best to the last minute, refraining from spreading negativity, and working with the company to make the transition as smooth as possible for everyone. You may find these things difficult to do because, after all, you’re leaving for a reason. Just remember that trust goes both ways, even in the toughest of circumstances. Business circles are small and your integrity and reputation are portable. Taking the high road is an investment in your future—even if you can’t see it at the time.
We All Seek Out a Trusted Presence
Think of how often you seek out trusted colleagues for honest feedback or to bounce ideas off of. If you don’t have trusted colleagues at work, I bet you don’t like your job very much. Having people around us whom we trust is that important to overall happiness.
Show me someone who doesn’t have a trusted friend at work, and I’ll show you someone who doesn’t like her job.
With trust, you reap what you sow. As you work on your presence, consider who presently counts you as a trusted friend. Also ask yourself which of your relationships you would like to improve, and then make a move to extend trust in that broken dynamic. If not now, when?
Key Takeaways from Chapter 6
1. Trust is foundational to presence because you need others to feel secure about your credibility and motives so they invest in you as a person. The more trust, the larger the investment.
2. Trust can be measured and scored using the trust equation: Trust = (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) / Self-Orientation. This equation is a compelling tool to understand what’s involved in creating and sustaining trust.
3. When relationships break down or never take hold, self-orientation is often to blame. Furthermore, self-orientation and intimacy play off each other to create a negative or positive spiral, depending on the weakness or strength of both.
4. If you want to be more trustworthy, then extend more trust to others. Just like in the Pygmalion effect, with trust, you get what you expect.
5. In trying situations at work, where presence can be hard to maintain, try to focus on trust building. By strengthening the elements of trust in a relationship, we also buttress our executive presence to manage with clarity and grace.
Ideas I Want to Try from Chapter 6:
