How to build trust?

Let's see what trust is on the biochemical level and how to gain more of it

What is trust?

I had a conflict with my manager. I noticed I was being micromanaged, and when I asked for feedback, there was a full list of things that went wrong. Some of the things that were constantly recognized as my strengths were on that list. And they wanted me to get better at those. I was so shocked. 

I emailed back with a whole document addressing every individual point on that list. Basically showing that I disagree with it. We jumped on a call, and we argued. We jumped on another call shortly after, and we argued again. 

I then stopped myself and questioned the foundation they were coming from. On our next one-on-one, I said: “It seems, you’re frustrated with my work.” and paused. They replied back saying that they indeed were frustrated and upset that it had gone downhill. 

“Can you remember when it first happened? When did you start feeling this way?” - I asked. 

“In February” - they replied. 

“What happened in February that led you to this state?” 

We opened a Pandora's Box. The realization struck both of us. None of the concerns mentioned in the original feedback was true. It was about one very specific hiccup, that destroyed trust between us. We almost failed each other, but then we were lucky enough to find the true reason and address it.

I’ve been micromanaged quite a few times before. It sucks. I thought it was because of a lack of management skills at first. It’s been only a few years now since I realized that it is just partly true. 

A majority of us tend to put all the blame on the other party (I’m as guilty as it stands), in this essay, I want to focus on what trust really is, why it is a core component of our psychological machine, and what to do to gain more of it. 

From surviving in the jungle to thriving in a cubicle

Finding #1: Trust is a response to what we believe is true about another person.

So, what is trust in a nutshell? It is a response. It’s a response to how much of a threat (or support) another human being is. 

Thousands of years ago, the outside world was a major threat. As humanity, we were able to survive because we formed a group. It was easier to face the threat knowing there was someone who got our back and that we trusted them. This is why as a society we came up with a few tools to validate other people. 

Whenever we see a new person, we compare them to ourselves. How they look, what they do, and how they act. If another person checks all the boxes, we’d assume they’re like us and we can trust them.

That is, survival instinct is rooted in trust. It’s a foundational psychological need that can’t be ignored. If there's a lack of trust, we tend to compensate for it. And we often don’t do it in a healthy way. We’d suspect people in dishonesty and lack of competence, and the next thing you know - we fight each other and exclude the person we don’t trust from the troop. The fear of being excluded escalates emotions, as it poses a direct threat to one’s existence, and before you know it, things get ugly really fast. 

Finding #2: when we see someone we trust, our brain releases oxytocin and dopamine, so we’re in a relaxed state. That allows us to communicate assertively and work together more efficiently.

Our brain is quite literally built so that trust (or a lack of it) changes the way we think and act. When we see someone, our prefrontal cortex checks the internal database about this person to see if their past behavior identifies a potential threat. If not, we trust them. And if we trust them, our body releases oxytocin and dopamine, which combined with other reactions, makes the amygdala in our brain pick the relaxed mode as an opposite to being on the alert.

In this state, it’s easy for us to communicate. We also tend to do it in a more assertive way, which helps to avoid triggering a freeze-fight-flight reaction. 

Finding #3: Trust is either increasing or decreasing and rarely remains in a constant state.

That is the most beautiful and scary thing about trust. It rarely is in a constant state, it’s either increasing or decreasing. To make things even worse, researchers suggest that mirror neurons play a huge role in forming a trustworthy connection. So if we know someone trusts us, we trust them back, and vice versa. It truly is a dance between two people’s brains. 

In the corporate setting, a lack of trust is shown through aggressive disagreement, conversations full of anger, and micromanagement. When we trust each other though, we’re able to arrive at a desired decision much faster and get all the support we need, and it’s easier to focus on the actual work. So, it seems like we need to build trust, but how to do that?

How to build trust

In a cubical, the threat-support dilemma boils down to how we think competent, reliable, and honest our teammate is.

Showing that we’re competent means that we know what problem we should be solving and how to solve it. I’d leave the “how” part out of the equation, as it is unique to each challenge. 

Let’s focus on the “what”. We might think that something is the biggest problem that needs to be addressed just because we see only part of the whole picture. We need to align within the team first on what’s that we need to work on. And to do that, we need to make sure we pay attention to what’s top of mind for others and what they want us to do. 

To make sure I work on the most important thing, and others agree with that, I came up with a process that looks something like this:

Capture -> Prioritize and sign-off -> Communicate.

First, we need to capture what we need to work on. The list is filled with: 

• Projects we think are important to a company

• Projects that are important to our main stakeholders

• Projects we are expected to work on. 

I used the “expected to work on” here on purpose. Those expectations might be explicit and implicit. The explicit expectation is formed when we hear the “I want you to” type of ask, or when we commit to deliver something to a certain date. Implicit, however, is formed when we use a technique where the idea gets put up in the air for another person to react to it. If the reaction was positive (something like “Oh, that sounds amazing!”) an expectation might be created. 

Tricky, I know. 

During conversations, I try to capture both explicit and implicit expectations. I then follow up with a person I talked to after the call, sharing the list of those and asking if it’s accurate. The more you do it, the easier it will get and you’ll reach the point where it’s possible to filter out the expectations right on the call. 

The way to address it is to make notes along the way.

I just have a note that’s literally called a “Brain Dump” where I offload all and everything. I go through the note a few times throughout the day and unfold it into tasks for myself, and then do a final review at the end of the day. For other sources of information, such as articles, books, and videos I use Readwise, but that’s a different story. 

The process of taking notes doesn’t need to be complicated, but you have to be able to capture all the incoming information, and later prioritize it. As David Perell put it: 

“There are people who put as much effort into their note-taking system as NASA engineers put into the rockets that got us to the moon… Don’t do it.”

What is important here is to make the notes digestible and sharable. I have three categories for every note I share:

• Decisions we made

• The next steps from each party involved

• What surprised me (any interesting data point or observation).

Once all the inputs are captured, they need to be prioritized. Thus, we need to understand the importance of every item through the lens of:

• company - will it make an impact on the company as a whole?

• product area - will the product area benefit from the project and how exactly?

• individual - how important is this project to unblock others or deliver a direct impact on the business?

Prioritization never happens in a silo, and you absolutely need to get the sign-off from a manager. A regular one-on-one is a good use of time for that (duh!). I found that a simple Google Doc will do it. The doc I use has three sections:

• updates from the previous period 

• current priorities

• upcoming projects

I also add the supporting evidence as to why something is important and is currently work-in-progress, and what was deprioritized when the decision was made.

Once we’re clear on that one, it’s time to communicate with other stakeholders. How often does a stakeholder want to receive an update? How many details should be included? What’s the ideal channel? At the start of each project, I reach out to all the stakeholders and ask them those questions. I’m yet to try a more scalable approach, but the idea is worth researching.

I have some other thoughts on how to be more competent and what to do on a daily basis here.

Now, to be more reliable means to communicate timely, do follow-ups, and meet deadlines. The routine of taking notes and sharing them will do a lot here. So let’s talk deadlines.

The majority of less senior folks are afraid to inform about slippage in the timeline, as they think it’ll show them in a bad light. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, it just happens. Despite the reason, you need to understand that other people communicated their strategies and deadlines based on your original estimate. Don’t be me and don’t try to pretend everything will be sorted out in the last moment, because, let’s face it, it might not be the case. 

You don’t necessarily need to ring the bell anytime there’s a new input, and make a bid deal out of it. What I found works for me is an FYI Slack message. It’s just a short ping, saying that there’s a new input that I didn’t account for. It might or might not lead to a change in the timeline, and I’ll follow up as soon as the team gets the estimate on how it affects us.

Then once the change is confirmed, I’d send an email outlining what happened, how big of a change we expect, and what we will start doing to prevent that from happening in the future. Sometimes, you can suggest changing the scope to still accommodate the original deadline. In this case, the DACI framework might do it.

All those things are like new rituals or routines, if you will. It’s easy to not do enough or take it to the extreme and bombard people with unnecessary massages. I often ask my colleagues to rate every new ritual I try on a scale from 1 to 10 and ask them to explain why they gave me a certain mark, and how the very same ritual helps to address one of the three core components of trust. Here’s an example message I’d send: 

“Hey, Morgan!

As you might have noticed, I recently started sharing meeting notes in a new format. I wonder if you have a sec to help me evaluate this new ritual? 

On a scale from 1 to 10, how helpful do you think my notes are? Why?

On a scale from 1 to 10, do you feel like I look more competent/reliable? Why?

Thanks for your time”

Yes, we might argue about the phrasing of those questions, but the takeaway I want you to have is that you need to evaluate your ideas with other people, and see if they like them, and if they align with your goals.

Some tips

Now, I want to share some anecdotal experiences that worked for me in the past and I believe are beneficial for other people. I’m yet to say that these are universal frameworks, so I’d love to hear your experience on using any of those (or if you have anything to add!).

Be present and practice active listening

It should go without saying, but here we are. Don’t do anything else while you’re at a meeting. Yes, people can feel that. No, turning the camera off won’t help. Remember those mirroring neurons? If we feel that another person isn’t interested in us, we become less interested in that person. So, presence during conversations is an important one to build trust. 

To show presence, you obviously need to contribute to a discussion. If there’s nothing to add at a given moment, and you just need some time to process what has already been said, try to practice active listening. Repeat what has just been said using different words and ask “Is that what you’re saying?”. At the very least, it shows people around that you are here, and you are trying to digest everything.   

Assertive communication

There was a miscommunication. Happens to the best of us. Was it feedback that was delivered in an unclear way or another expectation was created that you didn’t sign up for - there’s a way to avoid conflict. 

There’s a simple formula out there that goes like this: I feel ____, when you ____, because ____, would be awesome to _____.

Let’s take an example. Imagine there’s a person who worked really hard on their communication skills after it was named as an area for improvement on the last performance review. Now, during the current review cycle, communication was named an improvement area again. 

Reaction? 

Frustration. And this is fair. But what actually happened? 

One of the two things: 

• This person tried hard to introduce some improvements that went unnoticed by the other party (remember that 1-to-10 scale? Exactly!)

• The root cause for this feedback being misinterpreted

Surprisingly, the solution to both of these things is the same. During the next one-on-one, this person might say something along these lines: “I feel like giving up and really frustrated when you mentioned that communication is still my area of improvement, because I took it seriously last time and did XYZ, but it seems I didn’t fully understand the foundation for that feedback. It would be awesome if you could help me figure out which of the improvements I made make sense and I need to keep them, but then also point me to some of the other things I better start doing to excel in communication”. 

Obviously, the level of resilience varies a lot and it’s up to you to choose how open you want to be. Why it works so great is because this person didn’t make it an attack on their manager and was able to not trigger the freeze-fight-flight reaction. Instead, this whole speech was focused on the person alone and it does make them sound honest and vulnerable, which helps build trust on its own.

Speak alike and be alike

Not a scientific approach, I know. It’s hard to measure the incremental uplift this change in the communication style will provide, but the anecdotal evidence suggests that people respond better if you talk just like them.

A lesson I learned from my previous manager is to listen carefully to the words another person picks. We wanted to get our C-level on board with the project we wanted to push forward. To align with them, we listened to the words they chose to describe the importance of something for the company. We then used the same adjectives to describe what we worked on and scored it high with them noticing that we indeed focused on what was top of mind for them.

Another example took place while I was getting ready to present one of my first roadmaps when I just joined a company. I noticed our CxO often asked people about the correlation of metrics they wanted to push with the high-level OKRs, so when it was my turn, I ensured we ran a correlational analysis beforehand to have that data available during the discussion. The roadmap was approved on the first try.

Assumptions -> Verification

Sometimes you might get a question that feels out of the blue. Usually, it’s because another person (your manager, presumably) gets triggered by your actions or words. They then assume why you behave in this way and ask/suggest something.

It all starts with questions first. If the first time the question was asked it feels weird, that’s fine and it might be totally random. But if it gets asked the second time, it should ring your alarm system. 

Let’s imagine a scenario where a person gets the question “What have you been up to lately?” and then within a week the second question of “What’s that you’re working on?”. Then a couple of days pass by and there’s an ask to do daily status checks via Slack.

A manager might think that this person is spending their time elsewhere and not doing their job. Therefore, a new control tool is introduced. It indicates there's a lack of visibility and that trust is damaged.

Most likely, there was a specific thing that made the relationship go sideways. The daily updates won’t address the root problem and the confusion will build up over time leading to a demolishing relationship that can barely be fixed (if at all). It’s better to register the alarm early on and play the role of a therapist to help the other person understand the root issue and address it specifically than trying to fix the symptoms.  

Oftentimes, people are wrong with the explanation of other’s actions. Instead of assuming, we need to ask if people know why they were asked to do something and check if they had enough resources and were generally set up for success. And then double-check by asking why something was not done. Only after, we can suggest the process how to ensure that no hiccup will occur in the future. 

Takeaways

Trust, while affecting our brain’s chemistry, is oftentimes built on our perceptions of what we think is true about another person. And therefore, if we want to have more trust, we need to change what a person thinks about us. It all comes down to a set of rituals one can implement to have a better position to gain more credibility that later on can be converted into additional support no matter if it’s a new project they want to work on or a raise in title.

How can you demonstrate that you’re competent, reliable, and honest?