Who do you choose to trust and why is trust so important to your personal and professional success? Whether or not you have ever participated in a team-building event like the trust fall, where you stand on a platform and rely on the people below to stretch out their arms to support your body as you fall backwards, or just sit in a chair without pondering whether or not it can actually bear your weight, you grasp the concept of trust. Now, if you have ever been the victim of someone’s prank of pulling the chair away just at the exact moment you commit to the sitting position, I’m so sorry, and you should never trust that person for anything again!
Introducing Cloud’s concept of Corner Four Relationships from The Power of the Other in a previous post, I will opt to not repeat myself here; however, one of the key components that Cloud outlines to becoming a high performer or to flourish, is the idea that all relationships require trust. And while Cloud shares, “I do not believe that one size fits all, there are a handful of universal concepts and principles that apply to every single individual or group performance challenge. Trust is one of those concepts, especially when it comes to tapping into the power of the other.”
So, as you motor down this road to a flourishing life and begin to sense the necessity to locate a Fueling Station because your energy may be low, be certain that your selection is supplied with the fuel known as trust. Just as a gasoline engine will putter to a stop if filled with diesel, your performance, and thus, your relationships, will diminish if you choose the wrong type (or person) as fuel. “We invest in ourselves, our time, our energy, our resources, our talents, and so forth when we’re confident that doing so will lead to good outcomes. Trust fuels investment-of money, time, energy, and self.” If our desire is to be fueled and ready to fulfill our callings in life, we need to comprehend the magnitude that trust plays in our personal and professional relationships, so I want to share with you Cloud’s “five crucial ingredients to look for when you’re ready to make such investments,” which he calls the Anatomy of Trust.
Fueling a sense of trust includes the following ingredients:
- Understanding – an awareness of yourself and others (Habit of Awareness); “a deep understanding of each individual’s needs as well as a shared understanding…and what it needs from each member to succeed.”
- Intent or Motive – this ingredient is where our fight or flight response is activated. “Trust is the salve that calms that itch…Are they in it only for themselves and their interests, or do they care about ours as well?”
- Ability – trust only comes “if they can do what you need them to do in this relationship. Ability is key to trust. We want to know our pilots have flown before.”
- Character – “much more than whether or not someone is going to lie, cheat, or steal…An individual could have everything we have discussed so far about trust…and still lack an essential character trait that is needed in your context before you can trust.”
- Track Record – “Everyone has a mental map of what one can expect from a person: the last time…when we’ve been down the road with someone before and know that it was potholed…then we only have ourselves to blame if we jump back into the car with them…Look not just at the most recent time, but at the broad pattern to determine whether you’re dealing with a blip in an otherwise excellent record. The ‘last time’ schema is more about the whole record than an anomaly.”
Returning to the opening question of “who do you trust,” we now have some criteria to use in evaluating the relationships in our lives and are equipped to be faithful stewards in the area of relational management. We are not leaving the people who influence us to random chance, but instead are using Biblical standards to evaluate who speaks into our life, especially if we desire to establish trust with and from others while spending more time flourishing in our life journey than floundering.
References:
Flourishing @ Life 
Sometimes it’s hard to tell who can or cannot trust. For me, trust is something that is not easily earned. It takes a while for me to open up to someone and talk about what I might be dealing with. In high school basketball, we would do these “trust exercises” where you have one partner who is blindfolded and the other is not. The person blindfolded you have to tell them how to maneuver your way to the other side otherwise you will run into something. The person who was not blinded needed to give clear instructions to help the person blindfolded to get across safely. This was a good exercise to do with our team to build trust with our teammates. If you do not trust someone on the team how can trust them on the court? Overall trust is gained when you both go through a situation and you both gain something from that experience.
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When thinking about trust, I initially think of my family. I am the oldest of six, a family of eight, and a lot of responsibility fell to me. In order to lead and be a figure in my family, I needed to have trust and be trusted with many things such as delivering my siblings to school, getting dinner ready, helping with homework, and much more. As I look back now, I see so many familiarities between that trust and the trust that now exists within the soccer team I am blessed to be a part of at Union. In both cases, there is a large understand of each other, a high motive to be better people, an ability to serve, a character that resembles the Lord, and a track record track record of excellence. As I continue to go through life, I hope to find more and more groups and individuals who I can trust and lean on.
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I chose this post because the concept of trust has heavily been on my mind in the past few months. I am learning the value of trust, in everything. So much of our lives depend on trust. Even for jobs. The employers do not only want to know if you are competent enough, but they want to know they can trust you (and maybe this is why GPA is as important as it is, because it is an indication of trust). We certainly need trust for our closest relationships. My favorite compliments I have ever received were those connected to trust. Someone once told me they would trust me with their life. Someone else even told me they would trust me to be alone with their girlfriend for a long time. People have opened up to me in crazy ways and some have told me thing they have never told anybody else. My high school superlative was Most Trustworthy. Yet in spite of this, I find that I can hardly trust myself at times. A few months ago I hurt someone I loved dearly. She trusted me so much, but I blew it. She went from sharing the deepest parts of her heart with me to not even wanting to talk to me at all. What caused such a shift? A breach of trust. In my opinion, nothing hurts as much as losing someone else’s trust. So, I find that I cannot fully trust myself. But I can fully trust God. Trust is even foundational in our relationship with God. So many times the Bible talks about trusting God, having faith, and believing. When we choose to truly trust God, then sin loses its power and appeal. Life is so much more bearable when you trust God and His word. You find that you can rely on God, even when everything else (including your own sinful nature) seems to be working against you.
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