Authentic Trust: An Often Missing yet Necessary Ingredient for Extraordinary Accomplishment

We propose that most commonly the “air we breathe” and the “water we swim in” in the business world is cordial hypocrisy. We borrowed this term from Dr. Fernando Flores - a renowned Chilean philosopher and entrepreneur known for his influential work in business management, organizational development, and the philosophy of communication and trust.

Very simply, cordial hypocrisy is the pretense of trust on top of distrust. It includes the overwhelming transactional, competitive, survival nature of much of the world of business. In such a world distrust often seems to be a necessary and smart move. Moreover, to pretend I'm not as distrustful as I actually am, is equally as smart, or so it seems.

We propose that if you are going to create the kind of partnerships, collaborations, alliances, and relationships that allow for extraordinary accomplishment, you must discover and develop how to build relationships of trust.

Trustworthy vs. Trusting

Very likely, if you're reading this right now, you're someone who's dedicated significant energy and intention for many years to become trustworthy. Think of all of the attention, focus and effort you have put into “keeping your word,” being accountable, fulfilling promises, and meeting goals and targets. 

We found - beginning with ourselves - in working with hundreds of business owners and leaders, practically all of them are massively underdeveloped in the world of being trusting and giving trust. In other words, we have become highly developed in being trustworthy and are significantly underdeveloped in being trusting.

The first mistake or conflation we often make is when someone has done something that generates distrust, i.e. they have broken an agreement or a promise to us we almost always have our distrust be generalized and expansive. For example, we say, so-and-so can't be trusted, period.

Through our inquiry, we’ve found in almost all cases, while distrust might be warranted, it's usually domain specific. For example, you shouldn't trust me to do brain surgery, but that doesn't mean I can't be trusted in many other areas. 

In addition to trust being domain specific, there are also types of trust to identify and be aware of on your pathway to Authentic Trust.

Types of Trust

In his book, Building Trust, Fernando Flores distinguishes several different types of trust.

Simple Trust is naive, and born in innocence. (Authentic Trust requires wisdom, not naivete.) When simple trust is broken, as it inevitably will be, it can never be restored.

Blind Trust is a result of avoiding or resisting the act of qualifying trust, and not having trust be domain specific. You trust someone or something, and do not question it. This kind of trust also includes “blind faith.” Blind Trust is very common in business and is very often based in “I know this person” or “we have worked together before.”

Authentic Trust

Authentic Trust is very different. It is something we do, something we engender and nurture, and something we make. Our mutual choices of trust determine nothing less than the kinds of beings we are, the kind of work we will do, and the kinds of lives we will live together.

We propose that developing Authentic Trust is imperative to creating partnerships, collaborations, and relationships that allow for extraordinary accomplishments together. How do you create authentic trust? By developing the muscle and the capacity to have conversations and take actions to directly address distrust with a commitment to elevate, engender, and restore trust.

My Experience With Authentic Trust

For example, my late business partner Richard and I developed being completely reliable with one another to address issues of distrust as they arose. These occasions weren't common, but they weren't uncommon either. If you have shared commitments with someone, and those commitments are big, there are always going to be times of unfulfilled expectations, promises not met, targets not met, and breakdowns happening – all of those events create distrust.

When those events arose, Richard and I attended to them from a place of trust – we trusted each other to have the conversation and resolve the distrust together, inside our shared commitments and love of each other, so we could restore and elevate trust. This practice was fundamental to our ability to enjoy an extraordinary partnership together.

Imagine investing similar effort and intention that you have invested in being trustworthy in developing your capacity and ability to address distrust so as to engender, build, foster and elevate trust. What if you were as developed in restoring and building trust so as to give trust and be trusting as you were in being trustworthy?