CHAPTER TWO

Trust of Character

Introduction to The Three Dimensions of Trust

In the next three chapters, you’re going to be introduced to the Three Dimensions of Trust, which we commonly refer to as The Three Cs of Trust, or simply The Three Cs: Trust of Character, Trust of Communication, and Trust of Capability. Together The Three Cs provide the understanding and practical behaviors you need to build and sustain trust in your relationships. Trust is inherently vulnerable. It means different things to different people and stirs provocative emotions in all of us. It’s highly complex, yet is the baseline for how we relate to one another in one-on-one relationships, in teams, and across organizations. It takes time to build, yet can be broken in an instant. Subtle intricacies of human behavior create trust’s vulnerability. To build trust into your relationships, you need a solution for overcoming its inherent fragility. The Three Cs give you this solution.

The Three Cs Solution

Your commitment to practicing the behaviors within each of The Three Cs will allow you to build sustainably trustworthy relationships. After all, you don’t want trust just for today. You want it for today, tomorrow, and beyond. The Three Cs will empower you to build trust-based relationships that will weather the unavoidable storms of life.

Trust begins with you. We ask you to take the initiative to make The Three Cs your blueprint, and then watch as your behaviors inspire trust in how others relate to you. Trust building is not a spectator sport. Committed action, not empty words, builds trust in relationships between individuals, in and among teams, and within organizations. It takes courage to go first, to experiment with new ways of approaching your colleagues and practice behaviors that honor your intentions.

As you engage in the transformation trust building brings, remember to have compassion for yourself. We all trip up from time to time. You’ll try again, and trust will grow. Let’s begin your journey toward more trust-filled relationships with the first of The Three Cs Solution, Trust of Character.

The First of The Three Cs: Trust of Character

Dennis lay on the hospital operating table, about to undergo major surgery to remove a very aggressive kidney cancer. The lead surgeon turned to his assistant surgeon:

“Ready?” he asked.

“Ready,” came the surgeon’s reply.

Then, he turned to the attending nurses:

“Ready?” he asked.

“Ready,” came the nurses’ replies.

Finally, he turned to Dennis as he lay on the table, about to be put under anesthesia. The doctor asked if he was ready.

“One minute, please,” Dennis said. “Can we take a moment to be mindful of this situation?”

“What? Don’t you trust me?” the surgeon asked inquisitively.

“I realize this is a serious operation, and I have ‘a lot of skin in this game.’ I want to make sure this surgical team practices what we preach about trust—everyone is clear on expectations, aligned on purpose, working well together, and delivering as promised.” Then Dennis asked the surgical team to join hands for an invocation before they removed his right kidney. At the end of the invocation, Dennis prayed, “May this operation be the smoothest, easiest, and cleanest.”

Four and a half hours later in the recovery room, the chief surgeon told Dennis the invocation of trust must have worked. “I have been doing these operations for many years and this was the smoothest, easiest, and cleanest operation I have ever done. You lost only one cup of blood.”

Trust of Character implies a mutual understanding between people that they’ll hold true to their promises. That they’ll do what they say they will do. You earn trust in your character when you keep agreements, honor intentions, and meet your own and others’ expectations.

What Is Trust of Character?

Trust of Character is the baseline for trust in your relationships. It’s foundational to your effectiveness at work and your trustworthiness as an individual. It opens the window to your inner spirit and intentions and lays the groundwork for connecting with others. The essence of who you are as a human being is brought to life through your character as you visibly demonstrate your intentions and commitment to “walking your talk”—or not.

You earn Trust of Character when you practice six behaviors: manage expectations, establish boundaries, delegate appropriately, encourage mutually serving intentions, keep agreements, and be consistent. When you model Trust of Character, you encourage others to do the same.

Three Dimensions of Trust

Key to Trust of Character is recognizing and honoring that other peoples’ expectations, boundaries, and perspectives are as valid as your own. This is easier said than done. Pressures trump your empathy and compassion at times, just as others’ burdens undermine their sensitivities toward you.

Have you put others in compromising positions by not delivering on your promises? Have you ever found yourself up against a wall when your colleagues didn’t meet their commitments to you?

“The boss wants it done yesterday!” Gabrielle, a mid-level designer said in exasperation. “We have to get the product to market in two weeks, yet there are major problems with it. We know it will take longer than two weeks to get everything working properly. I don’t know how many more fourteen-hour days we all can put in.”

Have you been frustrated because someone made an unreasonable request of you? Have you ever failed to ask for others’ perspectives and put them in situations of having to achieve impossible goals?

We’ve all failed to take into consideration others’ schedules, expectations, and peace of mind. And we’ve had our own needs overlooked. You don’t mean to let people down, just as they don’t mean to hurt you. Disappointment simply comes with the territory of human relationships. When these occasions persist, however, trust breaks down. You feel like “just another cog in the wheel” of others’ agendas and the never-ending quest for faster deliverables. You stop taking risks, are unable to tap your creativity, begin looking for reasons to miss work, and perhaps even start looking for a position elsewhere.

The six Trust of Character behaviors are one part of The Three Cs Solution to these routine occasions of broken trust. Practicing these behaviors on a daily basis will allow you and your team to get on solid footing. They will provide points of reference for your engagement with others and help you create the trust-based environment you want and need. Trust begets trust. Trust begins with you.

Behaviors that Build Trust of Character

You want Trust of Character. You need it. You deserve it. You build it through being intentional in your daily behaviors, the first of which is managing expectations.

Manage Expectations

Trust of Character relies on managing expectations: your expectations of others, theirs of you, and yours of yourself. Expectations arise from needs. Individual, team, and organizational needs are at play daily. We all have needs and unique approaches to satisfying them or guiding others to do so. Some of those approaches are more effective than others in preserving and building trust in your relationships.

When your boss or colleague sets an expectation for you that’s unrealistic and you aren’t able to renegotiate the goal, trust is compromised. When you aren’t given the resources and support you need to meet expectations, trust is damaged. You may feel set up to fail rather than to succeed. You test trust in yourself when you don’t clearly state your needs or you don’t equip others to meet your expectations. When people find themselves going through gyrations to understand needs or feel overwhelmed and under resourced, they struggle to meet expectations. Trust erodes, resentment brews, and results suffer.

 

We test trust when we don’t fully equip
others to meet our expectations.

 

“My boss said I’d have access to R&D’s research,” Steve, a process engineer, told us. “But they don’t seem to know what’s going on over there, and I keep getting pushback. I’m never going to get this initiative off the ground without their help. Maybe my boss wasn’t clear about what I needed. Or maybe he didn’t even talk to them. Who knows? The problem is, he left town for a conference and isn’t available to make anything happen until it is too late. He isn’t happy when his deadlines aren’t met, but it’s his own fault.”

Expectations go unmet for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, they’ve not been properly identified, explained, or clearly understood. Or maybe they’ve been understood, but they were unreasonable from the outset or inadequately supported. Unclear expectations cause misperceptions and misconstrued intentions, which interrupt trust in your relationships, both at work and at home. Even small instances of unmet obligations can lead to larger feelings of betrayal.

Be Explicit. To head off the confusion that can surround expectations, it’s important that you’re explicit in communicating your needs and in asking for detail about others’ needs. Being explicit creates clarity, alignment, and synergy. Regardless of whether you plan to start a project, form a task force, develop a unit, or delegate the simplest of tasks, you build trust when you set clear direction for what you expect from your own and others’ efforts and ask for clarity on expectations that have been set for you. Failing to practice either of these behaviors opens the door to frustration, and possibly even failure. Things become harder than they need to be.

Maria, a newer addition to the organization, was struggling to understand her boss’s expectations. At the peak of her frustration, she asked her boss to lunch. During the informal meeting, Maria was very candid with her supervisor: “I told her that I just wasn’t sure I understood what she wants from me. I told her I wanted to do good work, but I felt like I kept going down the wrong road.” Maria had laid out what she thought her boss was looking for, and the two began to build clarity around the expectations of her position. “We went back and forth,” Maria later told a colleague. “We explored a lot of options and talked about the breakdowns that had occurred. It was difficult at first to be so candid, but, after a short while, we got our creative juices flowing and I gained a lot of clarity for my role with the company.”

By allowing herself to be vulnerable and admit her confusion surrounding expectations directly to her boss, Maria demonstrated her commitment to contribute to her workplace in an impactful way. This commitment revealed Maria’s strong Trust of Character, which encouraged her boss to trust her more fully. As the two worked collaboratively to define expectations, what began as a task-focused conversation transformed into deeper opportunities for Maria’s professional development within the organization.

When you strive for clarity, you build collaboration into your relationships, even when expectations are high. Remember, you and your co-workers want to make a difference. You want to do your best work. Everybody wants and needs to know what is expected of them and wants others to understand their expectations. When you discuss goals and ensure everyone understands the related expectations, you open channels for support, and you contribute to business success and meaningful relationships.

How do you open dialogue to clarify expectations? On the next page we’ve listed sample questions and statements that can help you begin conversations around expectations with your co-workers.

Make the Implicit Explicit. An additional “curve ball” to managing expectations in your relationships is the fact that many expectations are implicit, meaning they are unspoken or undocumented. Have you ever taken a new approach to solving a problem at work only to be reprimanded for going off track? Have you felt that everyone but you understood the rules of engagement?

An organization’s cultural norms and traditions influence implicit expectations—as do individual assumptions, informal agreements, and past experiences. Relationships are jeopardized when implicit expectations go unfulfilled, often because people discover needs they didn’t realize they had until those needs weren’t met.

Unfortunately, most of us don’t identify implicit expectations until we’ve felt the consequences of not meeting them or experienced the disappointment when they weren’t met by others. Have you ever realized you weren’t clear about your expectations of others until your needs weren’t met? In order to be proactive in spotting these unstated needs, reflect on your workplace relationships. Make a list of what you expect from yourself, and from your bosses, co-workers, and employees. Make a list of what you believe they expect from you.

Take inventory of where expectations are being met and where they aren’t. Consider where you may not have been as clear as you could have been. What discussions do you need to revisit? Where do you need to clarify your expectations, and where do you need to seek clarification? You may discover that what you expect from others is similar to what they expect from you. Remember, you get what you give, and the surest way to gain Trust of Character is to give it.

 

Most of us don’t identify implicit needs until they haven’t been met.

 

Establish Boundaries

Jackie, an IT project lead, had been asked to collaborate with the accounting department, but she didn’t know who did what. She kept getting the run-around when she tried to nail anyone down about it. “I’ve been trying to get information for two weeks,” Jackie told Frank. “Each person I ask points the finger at someone else, who then passes the buck yet again. I’m about to just give up.”

Kevin’s department was experiencing its third restructure in eighteen months. His head was spinning, and he went to his boss for clarity: “I don’t know what my role is. Can you help me figure it out?” His boss just shook his head. “I wish I could, Kevin,” he said. “But I’m as confused as you are. I don’t understand the role of our team—or even our purpose—anymore.

Establishing boundaries around how work gets done takes the guesswork out of knowing what individuals or team do what and why they do it. When roles and responsibilities are clearly defined, you know how you and others fit into teams and how those teams fit into your organization. This clarity allows you to collaborate smoothly because you know where to go with questions, for information, and with innovative ideas when they kick in.

Although some may contend that boundaries separate people, they actually forge points of connection. When a team’s purpose, individual role, and responsibilities are anchored by clear boundaries, people are freed up to see points of connection where their work intersects with that of their colleagues. The more defined boundaries are, the more flexibly you and others can work across them. You have the understanding and structure you need to participate in healthy and creative risk taking for the good of the organization.

The less clear boundaries are, the more likely people are to spend their time second-guessing their places on the team and within the organization. In the end, they may opt to play it safe and not risk crossing lines that may or may not actually exist. Risk taking, creativity, innovation, and collaboration suffer when boundaries are not adequately defined.

 

Boundaries provide points of connection and
opportunities for collaboration.

 

What can you do to clarify boundaries? You can reflect upon the goals and objectives you’re responsible for accomplishing on a daily basis or in association with a project or initiative. You can think about the relationships you rely on in order to be effective. It may be helpful to identify where you are clear about your own and others’ boundaries, to pinpoint where your understanding is vague, or where you simply don’t know that boundaries lie.

You can also take a second look at your job description and job duties. Do they match the work you’re actually doing? Generally speaking, job descriptions identify baseline expectations and should describe 50 to 75 percent of an individual’s role. The rest of your work may require role flexibility as business needs arise and priorities shift. If you’re seeking to advance in your organization, a career development conversation with your boss could prove beneficial in establishing the boundaries of your position and exploring how you’re going above and beyond your current level of responsibility.

What can your team do to clarify boundaries? It’s a trust building best practice for teams to devote time to discuss their purpose and team members’ roles and responsibilities. Encourage your team to develop a team charter to clarify the team’s purpose, objectives, and goals. Discuss the best ways for your teammates to work together most effectively to solve problems, avoid conflict, reduce stress, maintain productivity, and serve clients. Engaging your co-workers in establishing these boundaries instills a sense of common ownership and further builds trust in your organization.

Delegate Appropriately

“My team committed me to complete a marketplace analysis for our meeting with the senior leaders without talking to me first,” Sara, a marketing specialist, said. “They have no idea how much time and effort this analysis will take. They simply handed it off to me. There is no one I can turn to for help. I’m scrambling, under a lot of pressure, and have to work late every night this week. I missed my little girl’s dance recital, and she’s upset with me about it. I don’t blame her,” Sara said with tears in her eyes.

You may associate delegation with assignments that are given out from the boss or leader of a project or initiative. This form of delegation is central to reporting relationships. Delegation also occurs informally between peers, however. When done appropriately, this form of delegation fosters collaboration and mutual support.

Delegation may take the shape and form of a “hand off” to a team member or a request for support from a colleague. Whether you’re giving a formal assignment as the person in charge or handing something off to a co-worker, it’s important to understand how to transition work effectively without falling into the traps of abdication or micromanagement, both of which erode trust in your relationships.

Effective delegation is giving responsibility to others and then providing the appropriate authority, resources, and ongoing support needed to fulfill your request. The process of delegation can be time and energy intensive as you strive to make sure those who you asked for support are fully equipped and empowered to give it. You delegate effectively when you build clarity into your expectations, define the boundaries within which the work should be completed, and set explicit, mutually agreed-upon measures of accountability. You develop Trust of Character by practicing meaningful delegation, by accepting and respecting your responsibility for ensuring that others are positioned to do what you ask them to do.

Know the Difference between Delegation and Abdication.

When you give people the responsibility to do a task or function but not the necessary authority, resources, and support to accomplish their goals, you’ve not delegated responsibility—you’ve abdicated it. Abdication removes the feedback mechanisms that allow people to voice their questions or concerns about how to accomplish their work. This lack of communication sets them up for lost productivity, stress, and possibly even failure. Although you may be intending to communicate your high level of trust in those to whom you assign responsibility, the degree to which you abdicate may end up breaking that trust rather than building it.

Recognize Micromanagement. Delegation requires a certain amount of letting go. You effectively delegate when you set the parameters and give the individual the opportunity to accomplish the task. When you delegate a task, then look over people’s shoulders and tell them exactly how to do the work, you haven’t delegated—you’ve micromanaged. You’ve given trust, then taken it away. You’ve sent a mixed message that erodes trust in your relationship: “I trust you, but not really.” Have you felt your confidence slip when someone doesn’t quite trust you to get the job done? The feeling sticks with you and influences how you bring yourself to your other relationships, including the one you have with yourself.

 

Delegation requires a certain amount of letting go.

 

To avoid the breakdowns in trust from abdication and micromanagement, it’s a good practice to ask people if they have the guidance they need from you and room to carry out the assignment in their unique way. When the work begins, check back in to see if they have the information, resources, and tools they need to be effective. If not, help them get what they need. Establish explicit, mutually agreed-upon expectations for the task or project and set a schedule for status reports that you both create to communicate progress and new information. Create a two-way feedback loop to ensure continued mutual understanding and alignment. This “communication highway” will help both parties feel secure in the status of the project and feel good about the progress they make.

Linda, a project manager, oversees a major project in which her direct report, Ted, plays a role. She promised the client that the project would be on time and on budget. Linda reviewed the parameters three times with Ted and felt certain he understood them. Ted’s part of the project, however, came in over budget and behind schedule. “Other things came up,” Ted responded when Linda questioned his performance. Linda was furious. Ted betrayed her. She had given her word to the client, and now her word meant nothing.

Linda and Ted sat down and talked about what contributed to the breakdown. Linda came to realize she had not delegated appropriately. She’d failed to establish periodic check-ins with Ted to ensure he was making appropriate progress to guarantee on-time, on-budget deliverables. Ted came to realize he dropped the ball when he didn’t go to Linda and talk with her about the other work that came up. He did not let her know when he was struggling to balance the project’s timeline with other demands.

Linda reassigned Ted the project. This time, they set up regular meetings to talk about progress, and Ted let Linda know what support he needed along the way. Linda took the first step. “I gave Ted another chance. I had a heart-to-heart talk with him. I reviewed my expectations and clarified his questions. I checked for his understanding by having him repeat back his grasp of his role and responsibilities. Then I asked for his agreement to the new expectations, with incremental goals at regular intervals. In validating the agreement, I shared the project’s success with him.”

Over the next six months, Ted and Linda’s new strategy and consistent behavior began to pay off. Within a year, Ted proved to be one of the most reliable project engineers in the group. Trust was restored and strengthened and the organization as a whole benefitted, as others began to observe and model the dynamics of Ted and Linda’s relationship.

Trust begins with you. As you delegate and accept new responsibility, you can take the steps that are needed to prevent letdowns, disappointments, frustrations, and broken trust. Delegation can be an occasion for excitement, high energy, and tremendous opportunity. It can open doors to learning about your organization, engaging with meaningful projects, or exploring talents you may not have known you even have. When you give away or take on responsibilities, you can discover new interests, instill confidence in others’ development, and gain perspective about the mission and mechanics of your business. Artful delegation deepens your connection with others and develops your readiness to trust in both yourself and in your relationships. Trust begins with you.

Encourage Mutually Serving Intentions

You build trust in your relationships when you make sure your needs aren’t the only ones you’re trying to fulfill. When you think and act with others in mind and are interested in their welfare as much as your own, you create mutually serving, “win-win” outcomes. Work effort becomes fluid, trust is reinforced, and a sense of community is created.

Terry is a team leader in a finance department. He remembers how his team pulled together during a demanding time: “Our team worked really hard for months on a new financial reporting system. The timeline was aggressive. At the onset of the project, we gathered together and talked about what it was going to take to produce the outcome we all desired. We knew it would require a major effort to do a good job and that there would be personal sacrifices along the way. We also knew that this was a remarkable professional opportunity for us all. We all agreed that we would do what it took to deliver.

Over the coming months we put in long hours—many late nights and weekends—and made personal sacrifices. Enthusiasm remained high because we looked out for and cared about one another. Although we knew we’d have to give up personal time, we backed up one another to make sure the sacrifices didn’t come at too high a cost. On any given day, you’d hear how people were supporting one another to meet the goal without running their family lives into the ground: “Who has a kid’s sporting event to get to tonight? I’ll cover for you.” “Did I hear it’s your wife’s birthday on Saturday? Take the evening off; I’ll run the reports.”

Operating with mutually serving intentions makes it easier to fulfill agreements with others. There are times, however, when your behavior may not serve the greater purpose of working for the “win-win.” You may inadvertently leave someone out of a decision-making loop, fail to include all pertinent parties in the circulation of a report, or miss including someone in the invitation list to an off-site planning meeting. Under pressure, you may have an abrupt tone in your voice or speak in a demeaning manner. Such actions, though not intentional, cause others to feel hurt, angry, and even betrayed.

People’s perceptions of your intentions—and your perceptions of theirs—influence decisions to trust or be suspicious. If you perceive that others’ primary interests are focused on what’s “in it for them” or in making themselves look good at all costs, you’ll be reluctant to trust them. They’ll have the same reservations about you if the tables are turned. Unfortunately, if trust is low, you may tend to move into protective mode. In a hypervigilant state, you may personalize everything, see risks in your dealings with everyone, and tend to cast yourself as the victim of others’ harmful actions. This obviously makes getting the work of the organization completed much harder.

 

You create mutually serving outcomes when
you think and act with others in mind.

 

Often people step into situations with a focus on what they are going to get from them. They don’t give equal thought to what they have to give. We’re all familiar with the expression What’s in it for me? It’s appropriate to ask that question, but if that’s the only question you ask, you’re officially in the mode of taking and not giving. We ask you to consider what you hope to receive from relationships. What do you have to give? Do you give the time, energy, and effort you hope to receive in return?

Supporting others and operating with a sense of shared purpose in creating quality products, serving customers to the best of your abilities, and honoring the spirit of relationships builds Trust of Character. Remember, building trust is reciprocal. You have to give it to receive it. Trust begets trust.

Keep Agreements

When you do what you say you will do, you build trust. Others see you as reliable and dependable. They know they can count on you to “walk your talk.” It’s simple to say you’ll always keep your agreements. It’s much harder to actually practice this behavior in the hectic pace of everyday life. Busy schedules, shifting priorities, and finite time and energy are all real, legitimate obstacles that get in the way of doing what you say you will do. You’re not alone. The only person who has never broken a commitment is the person who has never made one.

When you keep your promises, however, you feel good about yourself. It’s energizing to instill confidence that you can be counted on to come through for others. It’s empowering to build and nurture trust. In fact, keeping agreements is the Trust of Character behavior that offers the quickest traction for building trust in your workplace relationships. Follow-through on concrete action items sends the strong message that you have integrity by keeping your word. It also shows you genuinely care about others, and you’re willing to momentarily put their needs ahead of your own.

But there’s no getting around it: we all slip up and fail to deliver on promises. No one sets out to let others down, but we all do. When was the last time you missed a meeting because you were engrossed with other work? Missed a deadline because you were sick or stressed? Failed to deliver a piece of information because it honestly slipped your mind to follow through?

Occasional lapses in keeping agreements are unavoidable and, in and of themselves, may not compromise your trustworthiness. When people continually fail to follow through on promises, however, trust erodes. Their character is compromised, credibility is lost, and they’re no longer considered reliable, trustworthy contributors in their workplace. Unfortunately, people tend to forget the promises that are kept and remember the promises that weren’t.

You can be pretty hard on others when they fall short, but you’re almost always harder on yourself. Judging behavior does not help build solutions, however. The best route to keeping agreements—and supporting others to do the same—is to check out what’s getting in the way of their fulfillment and to speak up the moment you discover you can’t honor an agreement.

Unexpected obstacles, failing to say no when you should, or being faced with the “crescendo effect” of an accumulation of mounting pressures threaten your ability to keep your promises. You and your colleagues want to deliver. You want to stretch and grow and learn and contribute. As pressure mounts, though, you wind up feeling vulnerable. You begin second-guessing yourself and create your own delays. The next thing you know, it’s too late to keep your agreements, and trust has been damaged or broken—both with others and with yourself.

Nobody wants to let others down or be seen as the person who doesn’t keep promises. What’s most important to managing trust is how you respond when it’s threatened. Remember, trust begins with you taking responsibility for your behaviors in your relationships. Even when others may have contributed to your challenges, it’s important not to point the finger or lay blame. Doing so will only further undermine your credibility and put a target on your back when you’re the one to hold up progress in the future.

When you acknowledge at the earliest possible moment that you aren’t able to keep the original agreement, own your role in the hold-up, and renegotiate deadlines or deliverables, you maintain and even build more trust. Developing Trust of Character in your relationships means that you acknowledge others are counting on you and that agreements matter. When you work closely and openly with your co-workers to develop, negotiate, and ultimately keep agreements—even in the midst of hardship—you co-create the very thing you want most: meaningful, trusting relationships built on understanding, compassion, and empathy.

Be Consistent

No matter how thoroughly and effectively you talk about trust, you can’t actually build it without backing up that talk with visible, consistent action. You are only as trustworthy as your next behavior.

Would you consider yourself a consistent and predictable person? Do your daily (and hourly) actions match up with how you want to be seen? Others need to count on you and you on them. When you’re not consistent in your behavior, others may see you as inauthentic or as a hypocrite with double standards. Inconsistent behavior raises questions: How can I trust her when I don’t know what she’s going to do next? How can I know whether I’m going to get fair treatment or an honest performance evaluation? He shoots from the hip; I never know what he’s going to say. Will I get the “nice” version or the “angry” version today?

When your behavior is consistent, your co-workers aren’t distracted, wondering which side of your personality they’re going to experience that day. They’re more likely to reach out to you and connect on a personal level. Your boss is less inclined to micromanage you, your employees are freed from wondering if you’ll have their backs, and everyone is released from the stress of “walking on eggshells” when they need to interact with you. People know they can voice their honest opinions and give healthy pushback to your direction without fearing you’ll “fly off the handle” in response.

Consistent behavior lifts your relationships to a higher level, instilling confidence and commitment and encouraging people to concentrate on the work itself rather than the confusion created by mixed signals. Creativity, increased energy, and collaboration result, and feelings of trust flourish.

Consistency in behavior becomes particularly important during times of transition. Adapting to the demands of a changing business landscape will be much easier and more fluid if you’ve already built a record of basing your behavior on principles and values, not expediency or your mood of the moment. When times are good and things go well, you may not notice how important consistency is to building trust. When times are bad, you’ll realize it’s absolutely vital. Your consistent behavior and the trust it breeds provide the foundation for your relationships to thrive when everything else is changing.

 

When your behavior is consistent, you are more likely
to connect with people on a personal level.

 

The Journey toward Trust of Character

Manage expectations, establish boundaries, delegate appropriately, encourage mutually serving intentions, keep agreements, and be consistent: in this chapter, we’ve given you what you need to build Trust of Character in your relationships, both at work and at home. As you practice these behaviors in your daily interactions, we ask you to remember to have patience with yourself. Trust building is a process. There will be periods where you’ll make great strides in shifting your behaviors toward those that build trust. Yet there will also be times when you’ll struggle to incorporate all of the behaviors explored in this and in the following two chapters.

Our goal in providing insights into the behaviors that build The Three Cs of Trust is to help you become more aware of how you can show up differently in your relationships in order to attract greater trust. This is incremental work. Trust is built one thought, intention, and behavior at a time. We encourage you to have compassion for yourself and others as you seek to integrate these trust-building behaviors into your lives.

Trust Building in Action

Reflecting on Your Experience

1. Where in your personal and work life do you experience high levels of Trust of Character?

2. Review the six behaviors that contribute to Trust of Character. Choose one or two that you feel represent opportunities for you to work on increasing this dimension of trust in your relationships with others.

Manage expectations

Establish boundaries

Delegate appropriately

Encourage mutually serving intentions

Keep agreements

Be consistent

3. When you need to turn to someone for help, who do you think of first? Why do you trust this person? Now think of someone you don’t trust. How do the two compare? What can you learn from this comparison?

 

Trust Tip The business of relationships starts with Trust of Character—walking your talk, doing what you say you will do, expressing interest in others’ well-being, and being consistent in your behaviors.

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