I recently re-read Patrick Lencioni’s The Five Dysfunctions of a Teambusiness fable and was reminded of the foundational importance of trust among a team. His definition is fairly precise and limited to a belief in the intention of the person (not in their ability or capacity), yet it got me thinking about trust in a more general sense.
We often talk about building trust. But I wonder if that is the right metaphor at all. Do we really “build” trust with people? Or is it more that we reveal the trustworthiness of others in our interactions and in their promises made and kept?
Some people can never build (or re-build) our trust and others can’t seem to shake our feelings of goodwill, no matter what they do. This led me to another thought.
Is trust not about the other person, and their trustworthiness, at all, but in our own willingness to be trusting? So, perhaps we don’t build trust at all, but rather we reveal the trust within ourselves.