A theme that comes through many of my blogs – whether they be around flexing to the new ways of working, how we approach planning and engaging with colleagues or just reflecting on ourselves in any aspect of life, and it’s the theme of trust.
It’s a term that is banded around a lot these days, but how many of us have actually stopped and taken a few minutes to think about what it really means and how we actually build it, maintain it and grow it.
I recently managed to get away and visit friends in France - that involved a lot of driving (2000 miles in fact), and during that time, as well as lot of bad singing, I listened to many podcasts and today I want to reflect on one by Brene Brown.
If you’ve never come across Brene – you should check her out, she became world-renowned when she did a TED talk about the Power of Vulnerability – it’s had 49.5m views and is one of the most watched ever (4th I believe).
She is a research professor who’s spent the past two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy.
She’s the author of five #1 New York Times bestsellers: The Gifts of Imperfection, Daring Greatly, Rising Strong, Braving the Wilderness, and Dare to Lead.
Brene’s view on Trust I think is insightful and I wanted to share her view with you today.
She explains that it’s hard to understand a term as broad as trust, especially when we know that people create it differently, honour is differently and give it away easily or never.
She therefore completed years of research to understand what constitutes trust and broke it down into 7 constituent parts using the acronym BRAVING.
When we trust, we are braving connection with someone. So what are the parts of trust:
B - Boundaries - there is no trust without boundaries. If you are about your boundaries and you hold them, and you’re clear about my boundaries and you respect them. If you’re not clear on them and what is and is not ok – you ask.
R - Reliability - I can only trust you if you do what you say you’re going to do. And not once – every time, consistently. In a working context, reliability means that we have to be vert clear on our limitation so we don’t take on so much that we come up short and don’t deliver on our commitments and balance competing priorities.
A - Accountability - I can only trust you, if when you make a mistake, you’re willing to own it, apologise for it, and amends. I can only trust you, if when I make a mistaken, I’m allowed to own it, apologise and make amends. No accountability, no trust.
V - Vault - the Vault is very important – when I share with you, you will hold it in confidence. What you share with me, I will hold in confidence. This is probably the place most people lost trust. If we share things that are not ours to share (i.e. for gossip or to hot wire a connection with someone else) then we are undermining trust. We need to know that our confidences are kept.
I - Integrity - I cannot trust you and be in a trusting relationship with you if you do not act from a place of integrity and encourage me to do the same. Brene shared her definition of integrity which I loved too... it really resonates with me:
“it’s choosing courage over comfort. You chose what is right over what is fun, fast or easy. And you chose to practice your values rather than simply profess them”. Brene Brown
N - Non-Judgment - I can fall apart, ask for help, and be in a struggle without being judged by you. And you can fall apart, be in struggle and ask for help without being judged by me. This is really hard as we are all better at helping than we are asking for help. This also applies to not-judging yourself for needing help (this is a theme in a lot of my blogs too!)
G - Generosity - Our relationship is only a trusting relationship if you can assume the most generous thing about my words, intentions and behaviours and then check in with me. If I screw up, say something, forget something, you will make a generous assumption as opposed to reacting with feelings of pain, frustration or judgement.
Having an anatomy of trust is incredibly helpful, as it can help us understand not only how to create it, but why it breaks down.
She explained that her research showed that trust is a product of vulnerability that grows over time and requires work, attention and full engagement. It is not created in grand gestures and statements it’s built in very small moments. The ones of empathy, the remembering of things that matter to othesr, the considerations, the having your back.
The ones she cites include:
“And when we started looking at examples of when people talked about trust in the research, they said things like, “Yeah, I really trust my boss. She even asked me how my mom's chemotherapy was going.” “I trust my neighbour because if something's going on with my kid, it doesn't matter what she's doing, she'll come over and help me figure it out.” You know, one of the number one things emerged around trust and small things? People who attend funerals. “This is someone who showed up at my sister's funeral.” “I trust him because he'll ask for help when he needs it.” How many of you are better at giving help than asking for help? Right? So, asking for help is one of those moments.”
Another reseacher has called these the sliding door moments – the ones that could easily go either way, just like the 90’s movie.
Brene also used the analogy of a marble jar:
- where when we meet people we note the small things they do that tick off those 7 elements and add them like marbles into their jar
- when it’s full enough we give our trust, and their behaviours then add or subtract marbles.
- If it gets too low we withhold our trust.
The anatomy also helps us when it breaks down, when someone says “I don’t trust you” ,we can now undersatnd which part is making us lose our marbles from the jar.
Are we not reliable, have we shared something in the vault, have we been ungererous or judgemental?
This works with others, but also with ourselves – self-trust is important – you can’t give others a marble jar if you think yours is empty.
You can go through the 7 parts and assess if you are honouring those
B - Did I honor my own boundaries?
R - Was I reliable? Can I count on myself?
A - Did I hold myself accountable?
V - Was I really protective of my stories?
I - Did I stay in my integrity?
N - Was I judgmental toward myself? And I give myself the benefit of the doubt?
G - Was I generous toward myself?”
Brene quoted Mays Angelou who talked about an African proverb:
“Be wary of the naked man offering you a shirt.”
A lot of times if you find yourself in struggle with trust, the thing to examine first is your own marble jar, how you treat yourself. Because we can't ask people to give to us something that we do not believe we're worthy of receiving. And you will know you're worthy of receiving it when you trust yourself above everyone else.
So I leave this with – how full is your marble jar? And for the teams you are part of, with your line or assignment manager – how do the marbles jar look?
Using this acronym and analysis we can now have a more indepth conversations about what it will take to build the trusting relationships we need here in Cloud to move at the pace that is needed – to trust one another to attend that meeting without us, to voice our needs, to represent us, to honour the commitment we’re making.
It’s time we started talking marbles.
Until next time...
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