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The Biggest Trust Myth of All Time

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A lot of casual bloggers out there – and a few not-so-casual writers, even some famous people – are fond of quipping about trust in ways that at first blush sound wise. 

But often, these aphoristic musings turn out on closer inspection to be untrue.  They are pop wisdom, bubble gum sayings, reflecting a failure to apply critical thinking to the subject of trust.  They belong more to the genre of inspirational wallpaper postings on Pinterest. 

Case in point: the common claim that “trust takes years to build, and only minutes to destroy.”  It may be the Biggest Trust Myth of All Time. 

First, let’s point out some of the myth-purveyors – then we’ll get to why it’s a myth. 

The Ubiquity of the Biggest Trust Myth

A simple Google search finds the following:

“It can take years to create trust and only a day to lose it.”…Angus Jenkinson,  From Stress to Serenity: Gaining Strength in the Trials of Life    

“It’s [sic] takes years to build trust and minutes to lose it.” …@Relationsmentor, with 66,000 Twitter followers

“Trust takes years to build, seconds to break, and forever to repair.”…Amy Rees Anderson, Balancing Work and Family Life Blog

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”…Warren Buffett, America’s favorite billionaire

“Trust is not something you can take for granted. It takes months – sometimes years – to build. Unfortunately, you can lose it overnight.”...Michael Hyatt, author, virtual mentor, online leadership platforms

“Although [trust] takes a long time to develop, it can be destroyed by a single action.”…Frank Sonnenberg, author, leadership expert

“It takes time to build trust and just seconds to blow it away.”…Dunham+Company, strategic marketing and fundraising services provider

“It takes years to build trust and minutes to lose it.”…Vontae Davis, 2X Pro Bowl cornerback for the Indianapolis Colts

“It takes time to earn [trust in leadership] but it takes no time to lose it.”…Building Blocks of Agency Development: a Handbook of Life Insurance

“It takes years to build trust and a single moment to lose it.”…Steve Adams, Children’s Ministry on Purpose: a Purpose-driven Approach to Lead Kids Towards Spiritual Health

All right, you get the idea. Note there are a few respected names on there, along with all the casual opiners. Now let’s see what’s wrong with it. 

Myth Busting: The Relationship of Trust and Time

Let’s chip away at this myth a piece at a time.

First, a lot of trust doesn’t take time at all. Most trust gets created in step-functions, in moments-that-matter, in our instantaneous reactions to what someone says or how they comport themselves. We humans are exquisitely tuned relationship detectors, finely honed over eons of evolution to rapidly assess a host of factors revealing others’ good or bad intentions toward us. We make snap judgments because we’re built to do so (and we generally do them well).

Second, the kind of trust that does take time is just one very particular subset of trust: the kind of trust that depends on reliability, dependability, predictability. Almost by definition, the assessment of reliability requires the passage of time, because it requires repetition – and repetition only happens in time. 

But reliability is far from the only, or even most powerful, form of trustworthiness. There is credibility, the sense that the other party is smart, capable, expert, competent – an expert. There is intimacy, the sense that the other party understands us deeply, respects our innermost feelings, and is a safe haven for personal issues. There is other-orientation, the sense that the other party has our best interests at heart, rather than just being focused on themselves. 

When time-based trust is up against the other types of trust, it is a weak force. When Bernie Madoff’s clients saw a brief hiccup in results, they didn’t lose all trust in him: after all, he had credentials. He understood them (or so they felt). And he donated to their charities. What’s a little blip in his track record, with all that to  fall back on?

When a West Virginia lab reported that Volkswagen’s on-the-road emissions results varied massively from those in the lab, Volkswagen didn’t “lose trust in an instant.” On the contrary: the Great Volkswagen successfully denied the obvious (credibility), and had a long-standing positive consumer image. It took years for that fatal data to be acknowledged. 

Third, time-based trust is relatively thin trust. I trust Amazon in large part because they have a great track record of delivering my packages correctly and on time. But if my trust is solely based on reliability, it can be overwhelmed – one way or the other – by other factors.  Suppose I have a wonderful customer service experience with Amazon: I’m likely to trust them even more, even if they miss a few deliveries. Suppose I have a terrible customer experience with Amazon: my trust will go way down, even if they continue excellent delivery. Time is not the factor it’s cracked up to be.

The Heart of the Matter: It’s Not Time, It’s Quality

The heart of the matter is this: comparing trust gained and lost isn’t a function of time, it’s a function of quality. 

If I have a deep level of trust in you, and you screw up a little bit – I’m likely to forgive you, give you another chance, cut you a break. Of course, if you screw up a lot – enough to use up the reservoir of trust we’ve developed – then that’s another matter entirely. 

Think about your friends. If you screw up a little bit – forget to bring the salad for the picnic, show up late for the movies, do that annoying thing they asked you not to – do you instantly lose all their trust? Of course not. Only if you betray a deep confidence, or gossip about them behind their back, or conspire to keep them from getting that promotion, will you lose their trust in an instant.  

Because it’s the quality of trust gained and trust lost that matters – not the passage of time.

Think Volkswagen; BP; Wells Fargo. Was trust lost “in an instant?”  First of all, the ‘instant’ was more like months or longer, but never mind – that’s a pretty short time if you’d previously had years of good reputation. So how do we describe that?

First of all, reputation is not trust. Having a “good reputation” doesn’t say much about trust. For most of us, ‘trusting’ a company just means we like their products, or ‘trust’ them not to violate laws. That’s a pretty low bar. 

When a scandal emerges, we lose trust in those companies quickly – not because trust loss is quick, but because there wasn’t much trust there to begin with. 

• If I trust you deeply, you’re going to have to do a lot to lose my trust. 

• If I trust you shallowly, you can easily lose my trust. 

• Whether trust loss happens quickly or slowly is a function of how much trust we had, and how bad was the violation: it is not a function of the calendar. 

The next time someone tosses that platitude about ‘trust takes a long time…” at you, try this:

Tell them they’re dead wrong – but that you still trust them. It’s a great counter-example: because if they’re so wrong about trust itself, then shouldn’t their error mean you’d instantly lose trust in them? 

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By the way, Barbara Kimmel has a similar take on this issue: see The Quote that Does Trust a Disservice.

So, You Don’t Have Time To Be a Trusted Advisor?

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One of the more frequent comments I get in talking about being a trusted advisor is this:

“We’d love to practice all the things you talk about, Charlie, we agree with them all.  But, we just don’t have the luxury of the kind of time it takes to get there. There are too many other demands, and we just can’t spare that kind of time.”

True or False: It takes more time to be a true trusted advisor than it takes to do just a very good job of service delivery.

Just to be clear where I stand: that statement is as false as a three dollar bill.

Trust Doesn’t Necessarily Take Time

First of all, the old truism that “trust takes time” isn’t necessarily true. Only one of the four trust equation components necessarily takes time, and that’s reliability – because by definition reliability requires a track record.

The other trustworthiness components – credibility, intimacy, and low self-orientation – can be, and often are, assessed in a few moments.  We all form very strong first impressions of people about whether they are truthful, competent, paying attention to us, of high integrity, and so forth.  Furthermore, we’re generally pretty right in those impressions, or at least we tend not to modify them greatly.

But that’s only about a single instance of trust establishment. Let’s look at trust over time.

Trust Saves Time

The fact that trust can be established quickly is only the beginning. What happens after trust is established?

Most would agree that having a trusting relationship means that things go more quickly from then on; your word is taken as bond; your advice is heeded; processes proceed more quickly; there is less double-checking, and so forth.

So, do the math. Let’s say you’ve got ten interactions with a client, and in the first one, you establish a great deal of trust. The next 9 interactions will proceed more quickly, with deeper results, than if you did the dance of distrust every time you interacted. The aggregate amount of time spent is almost certainly less, not more, in the trustworthy case.  Trust doesn’t require more time, trust saves time.

In other words, even if trust took time up front, the investment is more than paid off in future interactions by a host of benefits. But even that’s not the end.

It’s Trust Quality, not Quantity, that Counts

If you had to invest time to create trust, the ROI created would typically be very positive; it drives lower costs of sales, better time to market, and so forth. But you don’t have to invest much time. Not if you are qualitatively excellent.

Imagine two equally competent and good-willed professionals.  Over the same period of time, one does high quality client work, displays excellence, and offers good value.  The other one does the same – but in addition, becomes highly trusted. If time were the only variable, then this scenario makes no sense – given equal time and equal everything else, they should be equally trusted.

But we all know that scenario is actually quite common – one professional is frequently more trusted than another, often with even less time invested. Why is that?  What are those highly trusted people doing?  Ask yourself that question about the highly trustworthy professionals you know.

Let me suggest they don’t get there by logging more hours – they get there by higher quality trust creation. They are authentic. They take emotional risks. They pay attention. They don’t focus on driving clients toward their own desired outcomes. They go where the conversation takes them. They freely admit their blank spots. Their goal is client service, not account profitability. Their highest calling is to make things better for the client.

They are fearless, humble, generous, curious, and other-oriented.  Those are the qualities that make them trustworthy – not how many basketball games they took the client to.

You don’t have the time to be a trusted advisor? In the aggregate, there may be a positive correlation between high-trust relationships and time spent, but you’d have a hard time convincing me that time caused the trust. In fact, I think it’s more likely that trust drives the length of time.

You don’t get to be a trusted advisor by logging hours. You get there by being more trustworthy. And not only does that not take more time, it actually takes less time.

Don’t let yourself off the trust hook; you can do it with quality, not time.

Accelerating Trust: Woo Woo before you Do Do (Part II)

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Last week in Part I, I proposed a simple three-step approach to building trust quickly. I addressed the first two steps, which I suggested are the most important and least practiced (because they seem a little woo woo). Here’s the CliffsNotestm version:

1.     Mind your mindset. Take stock of the stories you’re carrying in your head—about trust-building, about the people you’re meeting with, about yourself. Be vigilant. Bust the myths.

2.     Set your intentions carefully. Be committed, not attached, to a specific outcome. Give people the psychic freedom to choose. Be someone around from whom they experience freedom, not pressure.

Today brings the next and last step:

3.     Prove you’re trustworthy. Take action. Show ‘em who you are, and who you aren’t. This is the step where the pragmatic, concrete, achievement-driven parts of us get to breathe a sigh of relief.

How do you prove it? Here’s a list, based on Chapter 22 of “The Trusted Advisor” which identifies the highest impact and fastest payback things you can do to build trust. I’ve organized it by the four variables of the Trust Equation and zero-ed in on actions that require moments, maybe hours, but certainly not days or months:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Credibility

·      Show you’ve done your homework

·      Take a point of view

·      Speak the truth, including ‘I don’t know’

·      Answer direct questions with direct answers

·      Express your passion for your subject

·      Combine your words with presence

Reliability

·      Make small promises and consistently follow through

·      Be on time

·      Use their terminology

·      Dress appropriately

Intimacy

·      Be willing to name the proverbial elephant in the room

·      Listen with empathy

·      Tell your client something you appreciate about him or her

·      Address your client by name

·      “Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.” — (a quote from “Trust-Based Selling”)

Self-Orientation

·      Build a shared agenda

·      Practice ‘thinking out loud’ with your client

·      Give away ideas

·      Steer clear of “premature solutions” (courtesy of Neil Rackham, author of SPIN Selling)

·      Ask great questions, from a place of curiosity.

Remember that according to our research, trustworthiness requires good ‘scores’ on all four variables in the equation. Choose a combination of actions, based on your audience and your own strengths and weaknesses. And don’t forget Steps 1 and 2—the woo woo before you do do—because the choices you make and the impact you have in the realm of doing are directly tied to your mindsets and intentions.

Think trust takes time? Think again. Unlearning our old ways of being in relationships with others takes time. Trust—not so much.