I am a big fan of Brene Brown and her work around vulnerability, shame, and trust. At first it was something I was spending time on with my own coach as a self-improvement project, then, over time, I started to connect with it again as a coach and mentor to others. And the more I talk about it, the more it’s clear that I’m not alone. I went off in search of some good resources on building trust and transparency, and unshockingly I ended up once again taking advice from Brene Brown.
Today I watched this video of hers that digs in on the subject “the anatomy of trust”, and admittedly I found myself questioning my interactions with people, my reactions to difficult situations, and I was pretty sure that I was coming up short. Trust is integral to building long, lasting, and meaningful relationships, both personally and professionally. Trust is a tricky thing. Tricky because it can be fragile, emotional, and so hard to build and earn, especially if you’ve lost it or had it broken. Do people trust me? And who do I *really* trust myself?
I don’t have the answers just yet. And since I am pretty sure I am not alone in these doubts, I wanted to share some of my takeaways from the talk. Here are some things that really stuck out:
Brene describes trust as a marble jar that fills slowly until it’s full enough that trust is established. Others fill our marble jars and we fill theirs. Marbles can also be taken out through little “betrayals”. What kinds of things can you do for others to fill the marble jars so that they trust you?
- Being genuinely interested in people’s lives, the good and bad
- Asking for help when you need it
- Attending funerals
- Sharing your hardest stories (a.k.a. showing vulnerability)
- Choosing to connect when opportunities arise
Trust also requires validity and reliability. Validity was fairly straightforward, but reliability caught me off guard. It made me realize that it’s something I try to pride myself on but as of late have struggled with incredibly. Reliability means we don’t take on so much that we can’t follow through on our commitments. GUILTY.AS.CHARGED
Breaking commitments is an example of a small deception that removed marbles from our trust jars. And it’s not just breaking work commitments, those hollow offers of “oh my gosh we should have lunch soon, I’ll be in touch”, and you know it’s never gonna happen. We’ve likely all done it, and as well intentioned and harmless as it seems to just say, it erodes trust.
Trust is choosing to make something important to you, vulnerable to the actions of someone else. ~Charles Feltman, from “The Thin Book of Trust: An Essential Primer for Building Trust at Work” (I’ve already ordered a copy of that book)
Trust is built in small moments, over time. A lot of time.
BRAVING connections requires Boundaries, Reliability, Accountability, Vault, Integrity, Non-judgement, Generosity. FWIW I might do a separate post on BRAVING but it’ll take some time.
“Beware the naked man offering you a shirt” ~African Proverb. I couldn’t resist a little humor because this post was getting awfully heavy. But honestly, it begs the question: Do you trust yourself? If not, how can you ask others to trust you?
This of course makes me start to think about how so many of the teams I work with are struggling to be successful in an agile environment, and an environment that 100% relies on trust and transparency to thrive requires an immense amount of trust. What things are teams doing that are blocking their marble jars from being full? Are they braving connections? Definitely gives me some interesting new discussion points and analogies.