My answer!

I took down yesterday’s Trust thought for the Day because on reflection, I felt I had been inadvertently disrespectful to someone I admire greatly. I am told I was wrong, but here it is put a little differently without the danger of that!

It was about definitions and the theory and reality of trust.

Academic thinking on trust is notoriously a minefield with different disciplines disagreeing, contradicting and in my view giving too much weight to lab experiments that aren’t rooted in the real world. After 2 years brain aching research I concluded:

1. You can trust people, institutions, brands, processes or a combination of those things

2. Trust/distrust is an outcome.

3. It is based on a complex conscious and unconscious judgement about something which is not certain.

4. It’s not really trust unless something could go wrong you are making yourself vulnerable to something bad happening.

5. The decision to trust or not can be coloured by a multitude of things from genetics and body chemistry through upbringing and experiences, culture, context, personality type, world view among others. It can be made after much thought, but more often in a millisecond.

6. It can be quite narrowly defined. You don’t distrust your plumber because they can’t mend your computer.

7. It is rooted in expectation. The expectation may be appropriate, or it may be a misjudgement. Eg People using Organic foods are consciously and unconsciously trusting in governance. Trusting my friend to drive my car is based on knowledge and experience. Trusting random websites to send you stuff you have paid for (which they sometimes don’t like my ‘Save the Bees’ Earrings on Instagram that never arrived!) is an act of trust in tech and in governance. All can be correct or misplaced, for lots of reasons to do with you or them.

8. The 7 signals of trustworthiness were the only thing the academics agreed on and are as good a place as any to start when thinking about avoiding distrust and earning trust.