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When Being Trustworthy Isn’t Enough to be Trusted

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In sales, you sometimes hear, “They were pursuing an aggressive strategy – aggressively waiting for the phone to ring.” In other words, sometimes you’ve got to take action.

Much the same is true of trust. If you want to be trusted, sometimes it’s not enough just to be trustworthy. Sometimes you’ve got to take action. But how?

Most of my work over the past 15 years has been on trustworthiness. In The Trusted Advisor and my other books, I’ve put a lot of emphasis on the Trust Equation – more properly, the “Trustworthiness Equation.” The implied (and often explicit) message is, “To be trusted, be trustworthy.”

But what about when that’s not enough?  How do you take action?

To understand what action to take, I need to differentiate between trust, trusting, and being trusted.

Trust, Trusting, and Being Trusted

In all the writing and research I see done in the field of trust, rarely do I see this critical but simple distinction being made. It seems quite obvious, when you think about it. One party trusts, the other party is trusted, and the result is trust. Simple.

And yet – most trust talk obscures the differences. See if you can guess which one is being talked about in these examples:

  1.      Trust in banking is down
  2.      Banks rank low on the trust scale
  3.      People don’t automatically trust their bank anymore.

I’d suggest that probably they mean the following:

1. “Trust in banking is down” – is about trust (e.g. the level of trust that exists between banks and their clients is less than it used to be)

2. “Banks rank low on the trust scale” – is about being trusted (e.g. banks are viewed as less trustworthy than football clubs or hospitals)

3. “People don’t automatically trust their bank anymore” – is about trusting (e.g. these days people are less inclined to trust everything, including, for example, their bank).

But since they all sound pretty much alike, unless you can read the mind of the writer, you can’t be sure. And here’s why that’s important.

The Reciprocal Relationship between Trusting and Being Trusted

The creation of trust between two parties depends on a reciprocating exchange. It begins when party A takes a small risk to trust party B – A is the trustor, the one doing the trusting. Party B is the trustee, the one who is trusted. And if party B agrees to the new relationship, the result is a higher level of trust.

Take something as simple as a handshake at a networking event. Party A goes over to party B and says, “Hi Mark, I’m Charlie – I think your work on the boson participles was great, and I just wanted to meet you (extends hand).”

If party B reciprocates (e.g. “Hi Charlie, delighted to meet you, I’ve heard about you as well, how are things? (shakes hand),” then the result is trust.

If party B does not reciprocate (e.g. B looks at A’s hand, does not extend his own, gives a tight-lipped smile and turns away), then trust is not created.

The key to trust creation is reciprocity – the trustor takes a risk, and if the trustee reciprocates, trust is created. If not, trust is not created.

Therefore: the absence of trust can be caused by:

a. too little trustworthiness on the part of the trustee, or

b. too much risk aversion on the part of the trustor.

Now here’s the key: if you want to be trusted, you have two strategies you can pursue.

  1. Increase your level of perceived trustworthiness (think trust equation), or
  2. Kick-start the reciprocity relationship by first playing the role of trustor. 

You’ve heard the second strategy before. Henry Stimson often gets credit for first saying, “The best way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him.” The same is true of making yourself more trusted – demonstrate vulnerability by offering to trust first.  The natural human reciprocal response is to return the gesture – tit for tat, good for good, bad for bad.

How often have we heard: You get out what you put in, the love you take is equal to the love you make, one good turn deserves another, whether you expect good or ill, that’s what you’ll get. They’re simple statements, but not simplistic – they’re profound.

In game theory, the simple “tit for tat” strategy is shown to beat all others. (You’ll love the link – Richard Dawkins in video with circa 1990 computers).

Using Reciprocity – Rightly 

Reciprocity is deeply wired into our psyches. You can trust it. You can use it. You can depend on it working – if, that is, you don’t abuse it.

Want your customers to trust you? Find some ways to trust them.

Want your colleagues to trust you? Find some ways to trust them.

Want your direct reports, and your report-to’s to trust you? Find some ways to trust them.

Trusting + Trusted = Trust

Trust it. It’ll work for you too.

Serving To Win

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Which of these statements resonates more with you?

1. I try to win, because losing sucks.

2. I try to serve my clients, because then I win too.

3. I try to serve my clients, which generally works out best for me as well.

If you chose #1, OK, I get it, I like competing as much as the next guy, but come back another time, we’re not talking to you today.

Today we’re talking about service, winning, and the link between them.

Do you serve to win? Does serving cause winning? Or is winning an occasional byproduct of serving?

What it comes down to is: Why are you serving?

Does Doing Good Cause Doing Well?

There’s a myth being perpetuated by well-intended, wishful-thinking, creative, holistic people out there: the myth that if you do right, you absolutely will do well.

In its more extreme forms, this belief would suggest that all highly ethical and socially responsible companies always make more money, every quarter.

Of course, there’s no shortage of cynical, embittered, hard-bitten “realists” who just can’t wait to whump the idealists upside the head with a good “oh-yeah-take-Bernie-Madoff” or two.

Who’s right?

Prisoner’s Dilemma

Social scientists and game theorists are enamored of The Prisoner’s Dilemma, a two-person game about cooperation and competition. In each game, each player can choose to cooperate or compete.

  • If one chooses to cooperate and the other to compete, the cooperator gets 10 years in prison, while the competitor goes free.
  • If they each choose to compete, they each get 5 years in prison.
  • If they each choose to cooperate, they each get 6 months in prison.

The person economists assume we all are—rational maximizer of self-interest—will rationally choose to compete. So will his competitor. Boom.

That approach sums up approach number 1—play to win. Turns out that businesspeople in controlled tests of prisoner’s dilemma strongly favor approach number one; it fits with what they learned in business school, be number 1 or 2 in your market, competitive advantage, etc.

In a connected world: boom. So much for statement number 1 at the outset of this post. Because in the real world, prisoner’s dilemma doesn’t just get played once.

Playing the Game More than Once

Part of the “trick” of prisoner’s dilemma is to play it more than once. Over time, the optimal strategy turns out to be “tit for tat,” i.e. assume the other party will cooperate, and do likewise. This generally ends up in iterative decisions to cooperate, with only occasional breakdowns of order.

But why do people continue to choose “cooperate?” Is it because the economists are right, and we’re all rational maximizers of self-interest who look at the long run? Do we calculate the odds and figure that the net present value of cooperating is greater than that of competing? Turns out it’s a little murkier than that.

Playing the Game With More Than One Player

In addition to frequency, the game is affected by participation. If there are high levels of information, visibility and interaction about how other players are engaging in the same game, then the cooperation strategy becomes even more dominant. There are fewer defectors from the cooperative strategy trying to squeeze in that last little bit of competitive edge.

Fewer Madoffs.

But: if you have more people choosing to tweak those odds, looking for just the right moment to sucker-punch the other guy after having lulled them into somnolence by a series of apparently cooperative gestures, looking to gain that final advantage—then the system starts to fall apart.

Why We Play the Game Matters

Prisoner’s dilemma is a pretty good metaphor for life. The economists’ fiction of individual actors is just that—a fiction. Francis Fukuyama puts it this way in The Origins of Political Order:

It is in fact individualism and not sociability that developed over the course of human history. That individualism seems today like a solid core of our economic and political behavior is only because we have developed institutions that override our more naturally communal instincts. Aristotle was more correct…when he said that human beings were political by nature.

The only serious debate is between statements two and three. Do you cooperate to win? Or do you cooperate because—that’s what you do? It’s the latter attitude, held by enough people over a long enough time period, that drives economic wealth.

  • A business strategist who advises any given company to be socially responsible because they’ll make more money that way is detracting, not contributing, to social responsibility;
  • An investor looking for socially responsible companies solely in order to make more money on their investment is a risk-seeking investor;
  • A society of people who cooperate “in order to win” is in trouble.

The Paradox of Trust

Belief number two—serving your clients because that way you win—is ultimately self-defeating. Because if “to win” is your ultimate goal, you’ll sooner or later end up facing a situation where you have to choose between serving and winning. And you’ll choose winning.

And then people will stop trusting you. And that disease is communicable.

Two variables make it all work: time, and numbers. Play the game enough times, with enough players, and it works. Where it goes wrong is when we:

  • Start managing to quarterly earnings
  • Start analyzing performance metrics in the short term
  • Analyze individual psychology outside of group psychology
  • Use the language of self-interest instead of group interest.

The paradox is: economics work if we justify it ethically. But if we try to justify ethics economically, it all falls apart. Beware of those who justify ethical behavior by the bottom lines.

Answer three—serve your clients because things generally work out better that way—is the “right” answer for all of us. If we remember to keep it long-term, and keep it social, then it works.