Interpersonal Relationship: Trust

The concept of trust in interpersonal relationships is critical in effective communication.

How important is trust for change agents and consultants? In a study of 8,985 associates of Human Resources (HR) professionals in 908 businesses, Dave Ulrich found that the single most important competency in the management of change was ''Establishment of trust and credibility in relating to others." Trust was rated far ahead of all the rest of the competencies found in the study.

Every intervention undertaken as a change consultant will depend for its success on open and authentic communications, among the people the consultant helps to implement the change. If there is not a satisfactory level of trust among those people, there will not be open and authentic communications and the change effort will probably fail. Establishing more trusting relationships among people also makes more energy available for problem solving - energy that was previously being used to guard against other people who couldn't be trusted.

In interpersonal relationships, trust is built on a foundation of two ideas. In order to have trust in another person, you must have positive expectations about both that person's intentions and that person's competence. One without the other is not enough.

Trust in intentions is a positive expectation that the other person will act benevolently toward us. You are concerned not so much that other people will always go out of their way to do the most possible good, but that they will not intentionally do harm. You use many cues from past history to decide if the person in question has good, or at least not hostile, intentions. How have others that you perceive as like the other person to be trusted, acted in the past? You may look at the other person's integrity - whether or not they cheat on their income tax and brag about it or whether they are dishonest in some other way. We use cues from the environment to help us. When confronted by a person wearing a mask and pointing a gun, we don't normally assume they are collecting donations for the local orphans' home! We also use the history of the interpersonal relationship itself as a guide to whether or not the other person's intentions are good. But, even if all of the past history and all the' environmental cues indicate that the person's intentions are good, that still is not enough.

You must have positive expectations about the other person's competence as well. If someone says that they can turn lead into gold, you will not trust them - not because they do not have good intentions, but because they do not have the competence to turn lead into gold. This is a critical point. You must have positive expectations about the other's competence in order to trust them. We do not normally take a fine Swiss watch to an auto mechanic for a cleaning, because positive expectations about an auto mechanic's ability to clean a watch are lacking.

The reason that distinguishing between trust in intentions and trust in competence is so important, is that we seldom do distinguish between them. All too often, when feeling a sense of discomfort, a lack of trust, we do so without thinking about what the negative expectations are. Obviously, it makes a difference whether it is another's competence, or another's intentions that we do not trust. The difference is critical to decisions about improving the situation.

Everyone wants to improve the situation. Not trusting someone is a lot more trouble than trusting them. Trust reduces complexity. If you trust someone about something, you only have to deal with one outcome of the situation. But if you distrust them about that thing, the possibilities of what the outcome may be are endless. That person may do anything, and that can lead to a complex set of possible futures. So, normal human beings would rather trust than distrust. And, if one wants to trust, one has to do something about those situations in the work environment where there is less trust than is helpful for doing the job.

Interpersonal trust works two ways. By definition, it has to in order to be "interpersonal.' Therefore, not only must you trust the other person, but they must trust in return. Also, in order to be trusted, you must trust yourself. Although you seldom think about it consciously, when someone enters into a reciprocal trusting "relationship, they evaluate not only the other person's intentions and competence but their own as well. Even if unconsciously, you will evaluate competence to trust and be trusted. If you are unaware of incompetence to keep a bargain, the chances are excellent that you will not make the bargain in the first place. Likewise, if you do not intend to keep the bargain, you will normally not undertake it

The concept of trust, then, is made up of a general trust based on an ordered universe, and more specific kinds of trust, like interpersonal trust, based on intentions and competence. This way of thinking about trust will help everyone to trust more effectively, and not to distrust unnecessarily or for the wrong reasons. In work life, trust means that within work groups you can devote more energy to productive relationships, and reap the benefits of people working in harmony with one another.