Only by Trusting Others Can You Get Their True Measure

Trust is one of the most valuable currencies in relationships, yet it is also one of the most fragile. It involves making yourself vulnerable based on an expectation of reciprocity and goodwill from another person.

When we confide in someone else, we trust them to provide us comfort and counsel while not divulging our confidence and secrets. When we allow someone else to handle our sensitive information or monetary affairs, we trust them to make better decisions than we would ourselves while not committing fraud against us.

Traditionally, trust is seen as having an upside and a parallel downside. The upside is that if we trust another person we can get help from him or her. The downside is that we are putting ourselves in a position of potentially being hurt.

However, in this post, I want to go beyond this basic cost-and-benefit analysis and explain an overlooked but important upside of trust. The key advantage of trusting others is that this gives us an opportunity to learn the true measure of another person. If we trust someone else, we will eventually learn whether we were right or wrong to do so because we are giving that person an opportunity to be trustworthy.

But if we do not trust, we will never learn whether our distrust was justified because we do not give that person an opportunity to exhibit trustworthiness or lack thereof.

This asymmetry has profound implications.

The asymmetric learning value of trust

From a decision-theoretic standpoint, trust is a form of risk-taking. Yet, unlike many other risks, trust is asymmetric in its informational value. If we choose to trust someone, two possible outcomes emerge: our trust is rewarded, confirming its validity; or it is betrayed, demonstrating an error in judgment. Either way, we learn something valuable about the other person.

In addition, we learn something about ourselves and our ability (or lack thereof) to identify trustworthy people.

In contrast, if we do not trust, we preempt the possibility of learning whether our distrust was justified. We miss a learning opportunity about another person and about ourselves.

Moreover, when we distrust, we risk creating the very untrustworthy behavior we fear. This is an example of a self-fulfilling prophecy. For example, leaders who micromanage and refuse to trust their employees may create disengaged workers who fail to take initiative. Observing apathetic employees in turn reinforces the leader’s belief that their team is unreliable. Indeed, when we do not trust our employees and co-workers, we tend to seek out information that “proves” that they are untrustworthy, and interpret ambiguous information in a cynical way. However, this does not necessarily mean that the employees were inherently untrustworthy—it only demonstrates the consequences of a lack of trust.

The hidden costs of distrust

A recent study demonstrates the consequences of missing out on learning opportunities due to distrust. In this study, participants were asked to trust strangers with small sums of money, with the hope that the strangers would return give money back instead of taking all of it for themselves.

The study found that participants who trusted others learned whether others were trustworthy or not, and subsequently calibrated their trust decisions closer to the general level of trustworthiness in that population. In contrast, those who distrusted were never able to get this feedback, and so did not calibrate their trust rates. Overall, participants who distrusted others in that study were the most likely to underestimate the trustworthiness of others, partly as a result of lacking feedback on whether their distrust was justified.

There are other, less hidden costs to distrust. Organizations that fail to cultivate trust among employees see higher turnover rates, lower engagement, and a lack of psychological safety, which inhibits creativity and risk-taking. In such settings, people can become more concerned with protecting themselves from potential betrayal than with contributing to the organization’s success.

Trust should be given before it is earned

Once we take into account the learning opportunities that trust provides, this tilts the cost-benefit analysis in favor of trusting others rather than distrusting them. Therefore, it is often better to trust others before they earn our trust, This is partly because others are likely to reciprocate our trust, and partly because we will quickly learn if we were right or wrong to trust. This facilitates faster decision-making and useful pruning of our social circles.

It should be noted that this doctrine of “trust first” does not mean being naive. If other people fail to honor your trust, by all means, withdraw it. However, often the pain or deficit caused when another person proves to be untrustworthy is smaller than the missed opportunity we absorb when we don’t extend trust as our first move.

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Trusting first enables delegation

This asymmetry of trust also suggests that we should engage in greater delegation. When we hesitate to trust our team, we end up taking on more tasks and work. This slows us down, and leads us to occupy our time in suboptimal ways. It also creates an environment of micromanagement and inefficiency, leading to reduced productivity from everyone.

In contrast, when we trust others we enable delegation. This allows our co-workers and employees to demonstrate their capabilities. Even if mistakes occur, our initial trust will likely motivate our co-workers to try to fix them, because giving trust to others is likely to lead them to act in trustworthy ways.

Good delegation is the key to exponential increases in productivity and impact, Trust is a necessary ingredient in achieving this.

Summary

The asymmetry of trust is a fundamental reality of human interaction. By choosing to trust, we open ourselves to the possibility of both affirmation and disappointment. Whichever happens, we gain knowledge. If we refuse to trust, we remain ignorant.

Thus, we must look beyond the basic cost-and-benefit analysis of trust, and take into account the learning opportunities we gain by trusting others.