This has come up recently in many forms. It’s interesting to me how trust is the key ingredient in almost all human interactions.
Musical Bands
I have two family members in bands and the issue of trust comes up often. I’m not a musician but I understand how you need to trust your drummer or bass player to hit the right notes in the right key with the right timing. Additionally, you need to trust your band to be on time and in tune for the gigs. When trust is broken either musically or professionally, it can fracture the band. Just look at the Beatles documentary on Disney+ “Get Back”.
International politics
I was listening to the NY Times podcast the other day. A reporter was saying the American adventure in Iran is breaking a long standing assumption that America, despite its flaws, is still inherently benevolent. The behavior of Trump and the administration is doing to opposite of building trust. They are shattering it.
Trust in international politics leads to economic realities like what currency a nation holds. When the dollar is the world’s currency, it’s good for America. If that changes, it could lead to very bad outcomes. Countries are trusting the US less and less.
Professional leadership
I always tried hard to establish trust in the people I managed by being transparent. It is up to the leader, the person in a position of power, to establish the baseline of this trust. Sometimes, that means letting people make mistakes in a safe way. Other times, it means being vulnerable and owning up to your own failings. Trust is when someone can be wrong and move forward through the issues coming out stronger on the other side.
When trust is not there, the company gets bad outcomes like lost productivity or bad strategic direction. As they say, culture eats strategy for breakfast. A culture of trusting teammates with their positions and responsibilities is also key to successful organization. Of course, some (many?) companies thrive in spite of this. Still, when you work with someone you trust, it changes everything.
I remember once an engineer was arguing UX with me at Marketo. Crash, whom I had a strong trust bond with, vouched for me. The engineer trusted Crash and through transitive properties now trusted me. It changed his entire demeanor. It wasn’t an argument anymore, it was a dialog.
Artificial Intelligence
I was watching a video of a progressive and a conservative debate each other. The progressive said some fact or statistic like “crime is as an all time low”. The conservative did not believe him and asked “what does ChatGPT say?” This was a staggering realization for me that some people trust AI more than human experts. In my own experience, when I talk to AI, it regularly hallucinates and tells me bald-faced lies. I cannot trust a single thing it says since the lies are so prevalent.
Recently, there has been a trend of PMs and Engineers making AI user interfaces using tools like Lovable. This has led to a diminished trust in designers. The problem is that many people can’t tell the difference between a great user interface and an average or even poor one. Trust that the designer will be better than the AI is falling.
I think this is happening in other fields as well. I’m sure there are doctors out there who are feeling reduced trust due to patients talking to AI.
Don’t get me wrong, AI is getting better and better every month. It may (likely) earn the trust by improving beyond what a human can do. It is a difficult path to follow. Trust now and get burned or don’t trust later and lose value. When is the right time and subjects to trust? How will people know?
It feels like we are entering a very difficult period where will not know what or who to trust.
Doubles Tennis
I recently played with a guy who did nit trust me at all. He kept telling me where to hit and how to play. (For the record, we are approximately equal skill levels.) his lack of trust in me made him overplay and made me tentative. We ended up losing an important match and the team was eliminated from the playoffs.
Bottom line
We are 98% chimpanzees. We are not a trusting species by nature. Yet somehow, we cooperate and build wonderful things like computers and houses and chicken parmigiana sandwiches. We do things that are impossible without trust and collaboration. When we undermine trust, it diminishes our overall potential. If you are a leader of one or more people, you have the responsibility to establish a culture of trust. Be vulnerable, have dialogues, adapt to changing conditions and the whole world benefits.
Whatya think?