Being trusted is a superpower at work and in life. When we’re trusted things move faster. Communication is more open, people become more cooperative, and work becomes more enjoyable as relationships can grow deeper.

I’ve found that there’s a very simple1 formula to building people’s trust.

Here’s the formula:

  1. Identify a need
  2. Say you will meet the need. Say when you’ll do it by and with what quality.
  3. Go and do it the way you said you would
  4. Tell people you did it
  5. Repeat

That’s the whole process. Do that enough as an individual and you will develop a reputation for reliability and trust. You’ll find that people tell you things and give you more opportunities. If your team does that you’ll find that other teams become easier to work with.

A few notes:

Misses count more than makes

Fairly or unfairly, one missed commitment is more memorable than 4 that were completed on time. If you’re operating at a trust deficit it will take time to rebuild trust, but the process is the same.

When you do miss, always try to miss early and clearly. Nothing erodes trust like discovering that somebody has been hiding failure.

Sometimes you’ll discover that while you don’t have to miss, your commitment no longer makes sense after making it: priorities have changed, new information has emerged, or another opportunity has presented itself. You can choose to make changes in this situation. If you communicate the change and your reasoning early to the people you’ve committed to2, this probably won’t be counted as a true miss. However it probably won’t build trust either, and if you’re regularly doing this you may create the impression that no plans can be relied upon if you’re involved. The tradeoffs here will vary based on context.

People can hold you to implicit expectations

You can lose trust if you share a secret, even if you never explicitly promised not to tell anybody the secret. You may lose trust at work if you don’t meet some standard of quality that other team members are hitting, even if the expectation wasn’t explicitly stated. This is also why it’s useful to say when and at level of quality you’re committing to something - if you think you’re committing to a rough draft of a tech doc by next week but your manager is expecting a polished doc to be done by Friday, you’ll lose trust even if you hit what you think you’re committing to. Since misses count more than make its important to understand and clarify any implicit expectations you might be held to

People trust kindness

When you’re kind to others they want to trust you and are more likely to overlook or forgive misses. Jerks fight an uphill battle to earning others' trust.

  1. As always, simple does not mean easy. ↩︎

  2. For work tasks it may not always be clear who is counting on your commitments: other departments might have been promised this work by somebody else, or be relying on another project that is dependent on your work. Be careful here. ↩︎