The Framework

Choosing to trust is choosing to make something you value vulnerable to another person’s actions. We're guessing that you've never thought about it from that perspective. 

It's easy to understand why it feels so uncomfortable to be in a distrusting relationship - what you value isn't safe in that person's hands - and why strong trust in the relationship feels so much better. 

In this episode, Charles and Ila unpack a framework of trust (based on Charles' "Thin Book of Trust") that they use repeatedly and successfully with clients; a framework of 4 domains that can be explored when examining your relationships.

We want to thank the team that continues to support us in producing, editing and sharing our work. Jonah Smith for the heartfelt intro music you hear at the beginning of each podcast. We LOVE it. Hillary Rideout for writing descriptions, designing covers and helping us share our work on social media. Chad Penner for his superpower editing work to take our recordings from bumpy and glitchy to smooth and easy to listen to episodes for you to enjoy. From our hearts, we are so thankful for this team and the support they provide us.

Transcript

Charles: Hello, I'm Charles Feltman 

Ila: And I'm Ila Edgar. And this is trust on purpose. 

Charles: Today, Ila, we're going to talk about the trust framework and language that we use when we're working with our clients around issues of trust. Around building trust, maintaining it, and when necessary restoring it. So this is the fundamental model that we use and work with. This is kind of an exciting piece for us because it's the starting point. 

Ila: I can honestly say, this is a model and a framework that I use with every single client. No matter if it's one-on-one coaching, whether it's teamwork group facilitation, I find that this model gives such clarity, and is so immediately and easily understood. I'm really excited to go through this today too. 

Charles: Yeah, I'm glad, yes. I used that model in the same way and as often, I have to say. Before we go too far, I want to acknowledge that this is not new material. It's not something that either of us made up that I first heard some pieces of the model when I was going through a coach training program from the Newfield network.

 And then I pulled in another piece of the model from people who do academic research in the area of trust and write about it in peer-reviewed journals which are not necessarily easily accessible to many of us, but I was able to pull that piece or a couple of pieces actually, from there. So I want to just make sure that, I'm giving credit where credit is due. 

So like to start with the definition that I use and that we use for trust and specifically, this is a definition of trusting, in a way, but we'll, we'll see how it fits with the whole process of building trust. So the definition that we use is that trust is making something you value vulnerable to another person's actions.

I'm gonna say that one more time. Trust is making something you value vulnerable to another person's actions. So there's some important pieces to this. First of all, trust and vulnerability are clearly linked in this definition. So we are vulnerable when we trust someone. We can of course limit that vulnerability, but why would we even do that in the first place?

Why would we make something we value vulnerable to another person's actions. What are some of the reasons you've encountered that people are willing to do that in the workplace in particular but in any place? 

Ila: Well I think where my brain immediately went is, I believe in the good of others. And so I am open and believe that they're doing and being good people. I'm absolutely willing to give something or to show something or to be vulnerable because I believe in that that's my relationship with trust. Right, so it's easy for me to do that. 

Charles: And I liked that you used the word relationship, because for me, trust is part of every relationship we have. Trust or distrust or something in between. But it's built into the relationships that we have all of them. From my perspective, quite often in the workplace, we trust other people for the sake of being able to work with them in a way and accomplish something in ways that we couldn't do alone. That's the whole point of working together with other people.

If we could do all this stuff alone, we in many cases might choose to do so, or at least some of us, others of us, they'll look for that relationship, and the joy of working with other people. Either way, whether we, are going for the joy of working with other people or there's something that we want to accomplish that we can't accomplish alone.

 Trust is critical. Trust is the lubricant that allows us to do it and do it well, and do it quickly in many cases more quickly than obviously without trust. So that's often the why, but part of it, as you said also, is that you trust other people because you want to connect with them in a sense it's part of that relationship.

 We also are willing to do this. We're also willing to make something we value vulnerable to another person in the workplace, because we believe that they will support us. They will take care of us. They have our interests in mind, as well as their own, which is actually one of the elements of trust that we'll talk about in a little bit, but we believe that in making this thing that we value vulnerable to them, they're going to support it. They're not going to harm it. And so when we do that, of course we then can work together much more easily, much more, deeply, much more collaboratively than we can if we're putting up like people do when they distrust. 

Distrust is the belief or assessment that what I value is not safe, in this situation or with you, or with you in any situation. So that fundamental piece of making something you value vulnerable, it calls for a risk assessment, if you will. When we're thinking about that, or even not thinking about it, but risking, we're still doing some kind of conscious or unconscious risk assessment. The point of having this framework is that when we do that risk assessment consciously we're a lot better off. When we are able to think about how am I choosing to make something I value vulnerable? We're trusting wisely and that's a huge benefit in work with other people.

 The last piece of this definition of making something you value vulnerable is the whole idea of what it is you value. What it is I value when I trust. For example, I trust you, Ila. What is it that I'm making vulnerable? Well, in my case, I'm making some of my ideas vulnerable. I'm making my ability to get these ideas across to people vulnerable because I trust that you are competent and capable of working with me to do that and actually extending or expanding my capacity to do that, for example. 

So that's one of the things that I'm making vulnerable. And in the workplace, when I talk with clients about this, it's really fascinating to hear what it is, or actually help them understand what it is that they're making vulnerable.

 So I am going to stop here and just say, what are your thoughts? 

Ila: Yeah. I really want to dive into the model, but one of the things as you were describing our definition of trust and distrust is that I feel like many clients, many people that I've worked with have a definition or a relationship with trust that it's either I trust you or I don't. There is no in-between. 

You're either a good person. So there's a moral issue with some people and how you were raised to believe or what you were taught about trust that there's a moral issue. So if I trust you, you're a good person, but if I don't trust you, you're a bad person or there's something in our relationship and it's certainly not me, it must be you. It creates this disconnection and either an 'on' or an 'off,' I trust or I don't trust. And what I really love is that it's actually okay, and we'll see, as we go through the model, there are places you absolutely shouldn't trust people, but it doesn't mean that there's a deficit or something bad.

Where do I look transparently and make an assessment that works for me and what I want in the relationship. And I think that's why there's such ability to really see things clearly. 

Charles: The framework that we use actually points to this idea that trust, isn't just one thing, one on, off switch that the risk assessment that we're making, we're actually making in four different domains, and I'll just walk through them and then we'll go back and describe them or talk about them in greater detail. 

The first one is the assessment that you have my interests in mind, as well as your own. When you make decisions and take action, you want good for me. You intend good for me. That might not always happen, but fundamentally you intend good for me, you respect me and you want to support me. You have my back. That's the assessment of care. And we'll talk momentarily about how we make that assessment. 

There's the assessments in the domain of sincerity. That is I'm gonna break it down a little bit more. If I assess, Ila, that you're honest that I can believe what you say. That I can believe at the very least you believe and can back what you say with evidence. And that you act with integrity. That is to say when you speak, your actions align with that. So the assessments that we make in the domain of sincerity have to do with honesty and integrity of the other person. 

The third domain is reliability, which has to do with keeping specific commitments that we make. So if I say I will get a list of people to you that we need to contact or maybe a list of ideas to you for future shows. And I'll get it to you by Friday. But I actually follow through that. I do it, and I do it in the way that we have both agreed on that. I should do it. I'll email it to you. It'll be a separate document. So it's fulfilling commitments we have made to each other. That's the domain of reliability. 

And the last domain of trust assessment is competence. That is, I assess that you have the skills, the knowledge, the experience, the expertise, the resources to do whatever job you're claiming you can do. Or that I'm asking you to do or alternately, if you don't, that you will say so. And you'll ask for help. 

So those are the four assessment domains. We make assessments in each of those four domains and we can make positive assessments getting back to this idea of trust, not being just one on or off. We can make positive assessments in one or two or even three domains and a negative assessment in a fourth. Also, when I'm making assessments about you, for example, and trusting you, you're also making assessments about my trustworthiness. It's reciprocal. 

So I can use these four assessment domains to say, oh, how am I doing in the domain of reliability or in the domain of sincerity. Am I being fully honest? Do I really have your back? Oh yes I do. So I am trustable for you. I'm trustworthy. So I can look at it from both sides. I can look at it in terms of making a wise assessment of the risk of trusting you. And then I can also make sure that I am being trustworthy to you and other people around me, or if I'm not I have a way of thinking about that and the way of becoming more trustworthy.

 Let's talk a little bit about each one of these and how we make those assessments. When I use the word assessment, an assessment is not a fact, it's a belief or judgment or opinion. And hopefully a what I would call solid assessment or grounded assessment, based in evidence, based in facts that I can point to. So When I'm making an assessment about your reliability, it's based on my experience with your reliability and coming through with the commitments that you've made and vice versa, flipping that, you're doing the same thing.

 Let's go back to the domain of care. In what ways can we assess or do we assess care? How do we know that someone else actually has our back. 

Ila: I think this comes back to me for how we show up with other people. So someone that actually is present in conversations that actually listens is here, and I'm pausing and slowing down on purpose. As I find in our world of busy, fast, and faster, it's very easy to flip through a conversation or not be present because we have 81 other things, demanding our attention. And it's something important to pay attention to. 

One of the most important things that comes up for me, when I think about the assessment of care is how people choose to be present. And especially in this world of fast and faster and doing more with less, leaders can absolutely feel that they don't have time to have conversation or to be present, or they don't know how. And one of the biggest gifts, I think you and I are both aligned on this. One of the biggest gifts that we can give any person on the face of this planet is to be seen and to be heard. I don't need two hours of your time. I need three minutes where you actually connect with me. To me, that is, I don't even know. I don't even have words that's big enough to say this. Like that is the most important thing for me and the domain of care.

Charles: I would a hundred percent agree with you. I don't know how many times I've been talking to a client who talks about their boss or their colleague, you know, their, peers are in the organization and say he doesn't listen or she doesn't listen to me.

 I have a meeting with my boss, and we're supposed to be talking about whatever it is we're talking about. And at the same time he's responding to an, email or he keeps getting interrupted and letting those interruptions take over our conversation. And that sets up the assessment that my boss really doesn't care about me. So that is a fundamental piece and that's a fundamental way of, showing I care about you. 

Another one is that people do not just listen, but show up in other ways. So for example, I was talking to a a client the other day who said Yeah, you know, I really believe that Joe, my colleague, really does care about me. He comes around and asks me how I'm doing on a regular basis. And I get it looking at him. I can see that he means that, that he's not just asking in a shallow or surface way. He means, how am I really doing? He wants to understand and hear from me how I'm doing . So those are a couple of key ways of demonstrating that there's care there. 

Ila: I think one of the examples that I use when I'm going through the model with clients is have you ever been on the receiving end of someone who clearly has a hidden agenda or that their scope, their project, their, whatever it is, is far more important than yours?

Have you ever been on the receiving end of that? And I would say absolutely everyone has. And so is that someone that you want to engage with, is that someone that you want to build relationship with? Is that someone that you want to collaborate with? And it's usually a full hard, no, because they don't give a crap, about me. 

Charles: Yeah. And the difficult part is what if that person is a colleague you need to work with in order to get your job done well, or even more devastating sometimes it's your boss, who you get in that sense, does not have your back. Doesn't really care about you. They are, making an assessment of distrust when that person, all they talk about is themselves, their problems, their issues, their concerns. Or when you come up with a great idea and the next thing you know, that person is representing that idea as theirs.

Ila: Sadly, I had a leader that I worked for for and the first time it happened, it was like, oh, it was just an honest mistake. She forgot to reference me. And then when it happened again and again, I actually chose not to work for her anymore. 

It was devastating to put your heart and soul into something and be so proud of what you had accomplished to have someone else take the credit.

Charles: So those are all examples of how we can build trust in the domain of care or alternately things that we can do, behaviors that can damage trust in the domain of care. 

Let's go on to the domain of sincerity. That honesty and integrity piece or those pieces. So I know a couple of things that are well, actually sincerity and particularly the integrity part is something we can often see in the moment. When someone is talking and we can see either that they're congruent, what they're saying shows up in their body, and their tone of voice and their facial expressions and all of that are completely congruent or alternately incongruent with what they're saying. So there's this immediate feedback loop if we happen to be in their presence. But there's also, many other ways that we make assessments about other people's sincerity and they make assessments about our sincerity. And I'll just bring up one of them and ask you what some of those that you've seen are. 

One of the ones that, I've seen is that someone in a meeting says, yeah, I agree, and then the next thing you know, they're talking to someone outside of the team or in some other context and talking about how this idea that they just agreed to is just a bunch of horse, poopy. Bunch of horse shit. And you're going, wait a minute. Why is this person doing that Ah, oh, I know they are not sincere. They have no integrity here and they're not being honest. They're not being honest in the first place when they said they agreed with it in our meeting or our conversation. And they're probably not being honest with that other person who knows. So there's one of the many ways that people show up as insincere or alternately when they do say the same thing to me and then to someone else. Oh, okay. There's sincerity here. There's honesty here. How about you? What are some of the ways that you've seen people behave in ways that support the assessment of sincerity.

Ila: I've noticed how people will come into even a frank conversation. So say for example, you know, we're coordinating a new project, so there's lots of moving pieces. And for someone to say, yes, I can take care of that piece, and, I've got all of these other things going on. So how do we collaborate together so that we can accomplish this?

 For me, there's an honesty and an integrity about I have good intention and I want to help do this. And I'm also being transparent that I have other things on the go. So let's figure it out together. There's this lean in let's collaborate and there's some maybe sticky or bumpy pieces we've got to figure out. That to me goes a really long way with creating that assessment of sincerity. 

Charles: Yeah. And, something that's very closely related to that is I had boss once say to me that kind of shocked me because I didn't think bosses would say these kinds of things He said, one of the things that I want to be able to do really well is, take feedback. I was his direct report in this situation was my boss saying, I want to be able to take feedback from people better. I aspire to that. I'm working on it. And I want you to know that sometimes I'm going to ignore that and that's my defense. And please help me with that. That was stunning. When this boss said that to me, 

Ila: I just got shivers. You saying that, and I'm writing a note here for myself that I think that's another episode where we can talk about the ability to give and receive feedback from a base of trust.

Charles: Yeah. Clearly, this particular person was very self-aware. And in fact I actually never encountered a situation where I went to give him honest feedback myself, and he didn't accept it and really consider it. Just the fact that he would acknowledge that he was working on that as opposed to, this is the way, I'm good at that. It really gave me a strong sense of his integrity and his honesty. 

 Sort of on the flip side of that, when I have worked with other people and they gave me. Good honest, constructive feedback, again, I assess this person is sincere with me. They're being honest with me. It's partly care. You can see where there's some overlap in domains. They care about me enough to give me honest feedback. And it is honest feedback. I really can believe what they're saying, and they're not just sucking up to me or whatever. They don't just want a favor, and so they're saying something nice. 

Or even, and we can go into this as another conversation, but that sort of Oreo or shit sandwich of feedback. Oh, here's something nice, you know, here's the thing I think you do well. And now here's what I really want to tell you, which is that you're not doing this well. Oh yeah, and here's something else that you do well. Pretty much that lends itself to an assessment of lack of sincerity, lack of honesty. I'm only going to listen to the middle part. That's all I'm going to hear. I'm not going to hear the other stuff, cause I know it's coming.

And then when it happens it's ughh, and then the other person is off on this insincere sort of encouraging whatever that I can't hear. 

Ila: And I immediately felt, cause I have, client right now who had probably the mother load of a shit sandwich delivered to him years ago in his career. And he still, when he hears the word, can I give you some feedback? He braces for impact. Physically, mentally emotionally braces for impact. I think that's a whole other territory we can go into and I think it'd be a really rich conversation. 

 There's one other piece around sincerity that I want to point to. And sometimes when we tell little white lies, to protect someone else because we don't want them to feel bad. We don't want to disappoint them. We don't want something for them that that little white lie actually creates fractures in our foundation of trust. And it can be something simple. 

I know it was a gut punch for me. My son is now 16, but I think this was probably when he was five or six. Mom, can we go to the park. Mom, can we go to the park? Can we please go to the park? And I said, maybe we'll see, knowing in my head I had a ton of stuff to do and there wasn't a possibility we were going to the park that day. And he came back about five or 10 minutes later and he said, mom, you can just say yes or no. It's okay. And so he had a sense, right, that I wasn't giving him an honest answer and that changed everything for us. It's like, you know what? I can just give you the honest yes or no, and we can figure it out together. So those little white lies that we tell, thinking that we're not doing any damage to the relationship. We are. And it's something important to pay attention to.

Charles: And I would bet that when you were saying to him maybe, maybe you were not actually present with him, you were still in your head doing whatever work you were doing. And he could sense that very clearly. So he, he knew that you weren't being straight with him just from observing that, behavior.

Ila: Absolutely 

Charles: And the honesty piece too is important. At one point I had a middle management level position and I was often called on to talk about projects that I was working on or the people that worked for me were working on. And one of the things that I, now readily admit upfront to people is that I don't have a head for data. I can't remember specific numbers. Sometimes specific names. So if I call you something else, Ila, it's not because I don't remember your name. It's just that I don't remember your name. So I'm filling something else in. Well, until somebody called me on it. Because it seemed important to have the data I would fill in an approximation. Without saying, I think it's this, I would just say here it is, which is not honest by a long shot. And I usually would be pretty close and I thought that was ok.

That created a sense of distrust from those people who were listening to me, that I could easily have fixed. I could easily have said, I don't know, I'll ask. I could easily have come in with a whole bunch of data on pieces of paper that I could read off of. I had a story about how that was not professional in my role. It took somebody telling me, Hey, you know what? You're shooting yourself in the foot, if you keep doing this. 

 So each of those are little behaviors and there's several more. Going to invite our audience to think about those for themselves in the domain of sincerity.

Let's move on to the domain of reliability, that keeping specific commitments we make to others and them keeping their commitments to us. Because, I find so often when I work with a team in particular, that is a sore point. That's a place where there's breakdowns. 

In fact, I remember working with a bunch of people who managed projects of different kinds in an organization. And there was a big issue with getting the products of those projects out. They were delayed. They weren't meeting the promises they've made to their customers as a company, because they weren't getting stuff done on time. So a colleague of mine and I started working with them and we asked them, So do people within your teams meet the commitments that they make? Do they keep those commitments? And they said, no, not really. We have to hound them. We have to follow them around all the time and keep asking them and keep bugging them. 

And so my colleague asked this brilliant question. She said, what would happen if you didn't have to do that? If, when someone said to you, I will have that data to you by four o'clock on Thursday afternoon, they actually did it and you didn't have to hound them about it. And that stopped them. They all just sort of sat there. And then finally somebody said, we'd be out of a job. In other words, a big, big chunk of their job was going around and, hounding people because people just did not keep their commitments otherwise. There was a huge break in trust there on a regular basis. So what we're talking about here is making strong commitments that people can keep. and do keep.

Ila: There's an organization I'm working with right now, that they are having a time with what we're calling accountability, but it's really reliability. And it's so fascinating as we unpack what's going on. It's because the requests aren't clear. The people are competent to be able to do the work, which we haven't touched on yet. We're going there. They're very likely sincere and taking on the work, but the scope, the deadlines, the level of details, whatever that is, hasn't been clear. And so there's assessments being made that, Bob hasn't delivered. Well, he has, according to what he thought he needed to deliver, but there's a gap. And then this points back to our whole conversation about feedback. It impacts reliability or what people are assuming as a lack of reliability slash accountability. 

Charles: Yes. And it's interesting because some people get this whole thing very well. worked with a team once where the complaint from the team leader was I have a superstar. He does everything that I ask him to do. He does it exactly how I ask him to do it. He's on top of everything. Nobody else does. They don't meet the deadlines. They don't, dot dot dot. 

As it turns out it's we explored more, what came up was that this one, person actually was very good, first of all, at listening, and anticipating what his boss needed. So, his boss didn't need to be clear with him, and then also being proactive in getting stuff done sooner than his boss might even want it. So he was really good at that, which allowed him to appear highly reliable and everybody else who was struggling with just exactly what you were just saying to seem unreliable.

But, that was not serving team, it was not serving them at all. What the leader really needed was a whole team full of people who were highly reliable and the leader needed to learn, to make clear and complete requests to start with, and we can go into that in a different podcast, what we call a cycle of a commitment or a cycle of the promise.

 And it starts with a clear and complete request that you were just describing that says exactly what I want, when I want it, and in what form I want it in . Little things like oh, I need it ASAP is pretty useless. ASAP to me might be tomorrow afternoon. And to you you're thinking 

 ASAP, well, let's see. I have five other things to do, Friday. Yeah. Friday I'll do, or if it's my boss, I might go, oh, ASAP. I better drop everything else. Drop my commitments to all these other people and get it done right now when the boss really doesn't need it.

Ila: There's a big gap in, understanding that currently with the teenager, because my ASAP is very different than his A.S.A.P. So I'm realizing that I need to get clearer on my deadlines. 

Charles: Yeah. And probably also, if it's anything like mine, getting clear on the conditions of satisfaction. No, I want the trash taken all the way out to the street. So that when the trash man comes around 6:30 tomorrow morning, the trash can is out there and they can, take it away. Yes, we laugh about that. there's, that teenage mind, But that happens in organizations all the time.

Ila: Absolutely. There's one piece with reliability, do you keep your promises to the best of your ability and how you break your promises is just as important as how you keep them? 

Charles: Yeah, exactly. So just talk to me a little bit about that term, how you break your promises.

Ila: If we're coming from a place of care sincerity, we're competent in our job, things are ticking along just fine, we're being accountable. We're keeping our commitments, but life happens. My kids have been up sick all night, or, you know, my mother-in-law's not feeling well or my car broke down. Whatever that is, what I notice, and was a pattern for me for many years, is you just sweep that shit under the rug and pretend it didn't happen, right? Pretend no one notices that you didn't keep your commitment, but that causes a whole boatload of damage in the relationship. Life happens for all of us.

So the minute that I know Charles, I can't make that meeting that we booked . I'm going to let you know the second, how can I make this up to you? Can I deliver information to you so that you're prepared, even though I won't be there, but how do I take care of the commitment? And, more importantly, 

taking care of our relationship, knowing that I do need to break a promise or rescind it or renegotiate it.

Charles: Yeah, how we break it is absolutely important as how we make a commitment or a promise. And of course in organizations, there are so many things that can get in the way, including one's ability or inability to say no Lots of people in organizations are constantly taking on stuff. Not saying no. And pretty soon there's just more work than they can possibly do . And so they're missing deadlines and they're not fully completing the work that they've taken on, or it's not really done to the conditions of satisfaction of the person who asked them to do it.

What I'd like to do is maybe have a whole session on this using perhaps one of the scenarios that we can bring in from one of our coaching clients or a couple of our coaching clients, because I think that we can illustrate this really well. So let's do a deeper dive into reliability to a, different podcast and move on to the final assessment, which is competence. I have the skills expertise, et cetera, et cetera to do this or alternately. And this is a big part, kind of like how we break a promise. If I don't have the skills, the expertise, whatever saying so. Acknowledging that and asking for help. For me very often, when I come up against this in organizations where there is the boss saying, you know, my, direct report here I can't trust him. And I was like, well, What do you not trust? Well, they don't do stuff right. And I asked him to do something and they don't get it right. 

Often that sort of competence is an issue of standards that aren't clear, you know, what are the standards that, the boss has or holds and what are the standards that the direct report or whoever it is they're asking, holds. Or on a team, many times, there's the person who says my colleague, my peer on the team and I are supposed to be doing this together, but I do it all because he doesn't do it right. And again, it's basically a lack of shared standards. They haven't worked that out and figured out for each other.

What are the standards? A key to a trust assessment a positive assessment of trust in the domain of competence, is often to do with, being clear on what we both are sharing as the standard for competence. What else have you seen in this domain that's important?

Ila: I'm laughing a little bit on the inside, because I see over and over and over again. I'll point to one client I'm working with right now. There's a whole lot of "shoulding" going on. That person should know how to do that. It shouldn't be done that way. I can't believe that that's the way they did the project. That's not how we do things, they should know better. 

Every time I hear the word should when addressed to someone else, or we also should on ourselves. To me, that's a clear opening to what's the missing standard, because it's so easy for each of us to come from our different perspectives and have our own way of doing things or the own way that we've learned or been taught or been given feedback.

 This is how you do this. And you will have a different way of how to do that. It doesn't make it good or bad or right or wrong. They're just different standards. So how do we come to alignment and shared agreement on what that is? And that's often just a missing conversation. 

Charles: Yeah, just a missing conversation. 

Mix of both: Just, just a missing conversation, just, just 

yeah.

Charles: One of the other things too, in terms of building that sense of, trust and competence is I find that when someone comes to me and acknowledges, I don't know how to do that. I actually assess competence in that person, even though they're saying I'm not competent, I assess that they're competent enough to know that they're not competent, for one thing. And,

 going back to care and sincerity, those other assessments. I'm assessing along with that, that they care enough to let me know. That they're honest and sincere with themselves. That often or that always in fact, boosts my sense of trust in their competence. But I think the biggest piece in competence is just demonstrating that you can do it. And that you know that you're doing what's actually expected.

 So having had the conversation, but one of the things too, that I noticed in the whole domain of competence, that's very common in organizations. The classic, you have an individual contributor who is highly technically competent. 

Suddenly, that person's boss moves into another role or whatever. And that person's boss's position is open. So that person gets promoted into the position of manager. They often are still working off the idea that being a competent manager is the same as being competent technically. They don't recognize that management, managing other people is a whole new set of competencies that they going to have to learn . And they may know some little pieces of it. They may be sharp enough to have learned some, they may have even had a manager who was competent at helping them develop towards that direction and the simple recognition, that it's a different competency of skills. I see that over and over again. Simon Sinek has a great video, called, Leader versus Manager, talking about the transition from a doer to a leader and how we don't really set people up for success well, but it makes me want to go back to even how we started our whole conversation and this framework and this model making it so easy to know, not just where to trust and how to trust, but also where not to trust. I love this word and it means so much more to me after working and navigating the world of trust is the word prudence or being prudent. 

Ila: As an example that I share often when I'm going through this model with people is that you can trust me as a coach. I am credentialed. I'm in good standing with the international coach Federation. I have hundreds of hours in my experience. You absolutely should not trust me as an accountant. You shouldn't trust me to cut your hair, to fix your car, to pull your tooth. Those are all areas where I don't have competence and I might show up with enthusiasm. I might be very sincere in offering. I can show up and be reliable , and I might come from a place of care, but you should absolutely not let me do any of those things because I don't have the competence that doesn't make me bad or have a deficit. It's just not where my competence is. So then it's prudent for you not to trust me there. And we can develop our trust in all of the other beautiful areas that we do. 

Charles: We can actually help . In the case of the individual contributor, who's now been promoted to manager and clearly doesn't have that competency yet. We can support that person in developing that competency, which is, as you were saying earlier, so often missing. No, you can't yet trust that person to be a really good manager of people. In noticing that in recognizing that you can help them become that. That's, I think one of the key pieces here in, saying, if I'm making my company's success or this department's success, or this team's success vulnerable to this person's actions, sometimes I need to recognize that that's not a good choice in the situation as it is, and that I may have the power to intervene and change that situation. So two things going on here, one is recognizing wisely, I can't just assume that because they were a really good software developer, that they can be a good manager of software developers. Or a really good sales person, therefore they're going to be a bang up sales manager. Just bad idea. It's not where I want to make that aspect of that team vulnerable. And I can do something about it. I can change that . 

Ila: Right. We can have an open conversation and put together a plan to build your competence.

Charles: Just like we have been talking about being able to do something in the domain of competence to change a situation so that we can increase trust or even repair it, if we have distrust. That can be done in any of these four domains of trust. We can identify the behaviors that are leading to distrust. And we can interview. We can have the conversations we need to have, whether it's about standards, it's about your reliability and the fact that you're not actually meeting the commitments and what's going on. What's behind that. We can have a conversation about, like someone did for me about not actually having the facts that I claim to have. We can have a conversation about care about, Hey, don't really feel like you have my back. You don't listen to me, whatever it is.

 But we can have a crucial conversation with someone in any of those domains. And it's a lot easier to start with, Hey the last three times that you said you were going to have something completed by a certain date, you didn't, or Hey, you know, I don't think we have the same set of standards we're working off of. Or even, you know, I'm, concerned about your, support for me in this. 

It's a lot easier to have that conversation than to have the conversation that starts, I don't trust you. People run away from that conversation. I run away from that conversation generally or used to. And so I think that's really one of the most valuable pieces of this framework is that it sets us up to actually have powerful conversations, crucial conversations about building or rebuilding or even maintaining trust.

Ila: One of the takeaways when I do trust workshops is in the four quadrants, take a look and think of someone that you currently don't trust. And where would you point to? And now knowing what you do about the model, what would you like to do differently? Secondly, take a look and have a bit of a self-reflection in all of these domains. In all of these four areas, how am I showing up? And is there anything that I want to pay attention to or tweak or adjust to build more relationships based on trust in my life? 

We encourage our listeners to think about it from that perspective, as you percolate over this. In future episodes, we will absolutely use this framework and do deeper dives on the trust issues that we frequently see and hear about with the clients that we work with in organizations.

 We have offered on previous podcasts, that, if there's a situation you're navigating, and would like us to, of course, confidentially, talk about on one of the future podcasts, then you can send an email to Charles at charles@insightcoaching.com. And we'd love to hear from you. Any other closing comments, Charles?

Charles: No. That's beautiful. Well, I will reiterate, we would love to hear from you. With that Ila, thank you very much for this, conversation today.

Ila: Thank you, Charles. 

Charles: Bye-bye.