On Trust

Trust is the base of any team. Without trust any continuous collaboration is impossible (1).
Trust is certainly based on telling truth and keeping promises. But it is much more in fact - there is implicit component: keeping implicit promises. This is difficult for different people, worse for different cultures, and even genders (men from Mars, women from Venus). My thinking is that it involves a lot of patience and readiness to accept different views of responcibilities for each other. Comes to mind another example: parents and children - so close, but always having different expectations of implicit promises. Comes close to the feeling of fairness. Was it fair?

Comes close to positioning of an individual in the society and expectations from others:
I'm beggar - people should give me money. I'm homeless - government should give me a shelter. I'm hardworking - people should respect me and help when I work. I'm rich - people should service me, because I pay. I'm powerful - people should do what I say. This is my father - he will never lie. This is my man - he will protect me. This is my mother - she will be kind and caring. This is my family - they are on my side.
The above are cultural norms and can be slightly or severely different across cultures and generations.

But the most deep part of trust - the person whom I trust won't use my weakness against me. I think this is brilliant - complete trust. This last part is something that is communicated without words and is so basic, that it is actually the foundation of a relationship between people and animals (forget culture). Surprisingly animals get it right much better and are very unlikely to misuse it whereas people actually like to misuse it and use as a weapon.
So here we are - building trust:
- show care
- keep promises
- be reliable
- be attentive to implicit expectations (manage expectations). I would expect that being open about you r own expectations counts as well. Ensure communication.
Ok, I see lots of steps to be taken for myself :-)















1)Jarvenpaa, S. L. and Leidner, D. E. (1999) Communication and Trust in Global Virtual Teams, Organization Science, 10(6), pp. 791-815.