Trust drivers: Competency, empathy, and authenticity

- Trust is the hope without 100% guarantee that someone will cause you no harm on purpose or unintentionally. When a teammate promises he'll finish his section of a project on time, but your credibility is on the line and you choose to believe him, that's trust. Or when people work remotely and the supervisor believes they're putting forth their full effort, that's trust. Trust is a belief in others that you offer to them, and that hopefully, others choose to offer to you. Trust inherently means risk. So why take the risk of trusting someone? Why not do the project yourself so you aren't counting on anyone else? Well, because the big ambitions in life require collaboration. We can't do it all alone. So to minimize the risk, people try really hard to gauge the trustworthiness of others. Your trustworthiness is evaluated on three primary criteria: competency, empathy and authenticity. All three affect trust, but we must emphasize the right trust driver at the right time. Here are a few ideas to consider when deciding which driver deserves your attention the most. First, we can prioritize our focus by building our weakest area of trust. Many people are pretty solid on two of these trust drivers, but most of us have one wobbly leg on this three-legged stool of trust. Ask an honest colleague to rank these three dimensions for you from strongest to weakest, and then prioritize improving the driver your colleague ranked as the weakest for you. If you're considered an absolute expert in your field and our super reliable, competency is your strength. If people see you as warm, caring, and understanding, empathy is your strength. And if people perceive you as honest, transparent, genuine and consistent, authenticity is your strength. Identify and shore up your weakest leg and you'll increase your trustworthiness. A second way to prioritize the trust drivers is by recognizing the interplay of positional power in the relationship. To build more trust with your boss or others who have positional power over you, prioritize competency. Supervisors most value knowing that people can and will get the job done. To build more trust with your direct reports, prioritize empathy. When you hold the positional power, people need to know that you care about them. A third way to determine which trust drivers to prioritize is by considering the country of origin or culture of the person whose trust you want to earn. Gene Brett and Terry Mitchell interviewed 82 managers in 33 different countries asking them, how do people in your culture determine if a business partner is trustworthy? Interesting patterns emerged. For example, people in North America and European countries value authenticity, so be transparent about business information. People from East Asian cultures value competency and tend to gauge expertise based on reputation, so ask for trusted third-party introductions and have concrete examples of your successes. Your colleagues from Latin America may prioritize empathy, so show your warmth by making time to socialize; talk about yourself, your hobbies, and get to know and care about their families. Finally, we can consider the situation you're in when deciding which trust driver to prioritize. If I'm introducing myself to someone at a casual gathering, empathy or authenticity are important. But if I've been called to the Dean's office to explain some mistake I've made, hmm, competency is more important driver of trust. Prioritizing will help you focus, but your aim is to be able to communicate all three trust drivers: your competency, empathy and your authenticity.