Everyone wants to be known as someone others can rely on, without a doubt, in any situation. But trustworthiness isn’t something easy to learn in a video course. That’s because your trustworthiness rests on a combination of different life principles that require time and experience to develop. This article will help you raise your awareness about these principles so you can show up the way you really want to in both your personal and professional relationships.

Your expertise does not determine trust, my experience of you does

Trust is a function of who you are, not what you know. While it is true that you can gain credibility from your expertise, this does not translate into long-term trust.

My mentor, Paul Martinelli, dropped out of high school at 16. He started cleaning floors to make a living, and that turned into a janitorial company. After that, he decided to mentor people on business, sales, and how to become truly empowered people. Would you trust his expertise based on that pedigree? Probably not.

Along the way, he learned through the school of hard knocks. He enlisted mentors, read a library’s worth of books on improving himself and applied what he learned to make the most of himself. These efforts would eventually lead him to partner with John Maxwell and start the John Maxwell Team. He would serve for a decade as president of the team. He’s mentored tens of thousands of people on how to empower themselves to live the life of their dreams. He lives in one of richest zip codes of the United States as the result of his accomplishments. Would you trust him based on those accomplishments? You’re at least more likely to consider him as a trustworthy source.

When you first meet someone, you only have their credentials and their word to judge them on. After a very short period, about six weeks, we’ll see them in action. We’ll evaluate if those actions match what they said they would do and what they presented themselves as being capable of. People that match their credentials gain our trust, and people that don’t lose the credit we originally extended to them.

Trust is a function of who you are, not what you know.

Paul Martinelli didn’t earn my trust originally based on his credentials or his results. In fact, I didn’t know him at all. I knew John Maxwell and joined the Team - that’s where I met Paul. I heard him speak and watched him teach. Then I got on his mentorship calls. I experienced other people’s results from following his teaching. I saw his success with growing and building the John Maxwell Team.

Everything he did lined up with everything he said… and still does! That’s how credible people build trust.

Consistency is key

One of the biggest mistakes people I coach make when developing an aspect of their character, like becoming more trustworthy, is the temptation to hyper-focus on a new action step until they experience a winning result and then move on to something else.

I remember when I was working on developing more assertive behavior. I knew my communication style was overly-passive. I would imply things I wanted, or couch them in half-jokes, or have a witty phrase ready to turn aside any possible hurt feelings. It wasn’t working, and I was miserable.

I started actively studying assertiveness and how to apply it. And apply it I did! I’d tell people what I thought of them, what I wanted, and make it very clear I wasn’t going away until I got it! Except… that wasn’t assertive. Because I didn’t know where the line between assertive and aggressive was, I rolled right past assertiveness.

The worst part was that I didn’t tell anybody I was working on something new. The end result was predictable: people were confused about my behavior. It didn’t match with their experience of me, and they didn’t know which version of Ben they’d get the next time they talked with me.

All that inconsistency led to diminished trust and more stress on my relationships. I lost friends through no fault of theirs because my actions no longer matched my words and I became unreliable and hard to trust.

When I finally did find my way to assertiveness, I was so overjoyed that I’d made it! I celebrated that I had “arrived” at being assertive. But I was so exhausted by my efforts that I slacked off. I returned to my passive ways. More inconsistency.

It would take about a year before I had done the internal work long enough to find a new, consistent, and assertive version of myself. A year’s worth of inconsistency is a very high price to pay for progress.

I wish someone had told me to communicate with the people around me better. If they had known I was working on developing myself, it certainly would have smoothed things over when I showed up differently. I could have gained grace, and probably a good deal of support, from my friends and family.

I had stretched well beyond my normal capabilities, and it was unsustainable. I also wish someone had told me to get real with myself first about my commitment to change. It would have helped to take smaller steps. I tried to do it all in one leap, instead of breaking it down into consistently applicable steps.

All that inconsistency led to diminished trust and more stress on my relationships.

My advice to you is this: get honest with yourself about the level of results you can consistently show when you’re in a new situation, learning a new skill, or developing a new habit. Decide on one specific and measurable action step that will help you achieve the results you seek. Tell everyone around you that you’re working on it. Take action towards your goal every day. Then, stick with it! John Maxwell calls this the Law of Consistency. He teaches, “Motivation gets you going, but discipline keeps you growing (1).”

Think of it like taking antibiotics. Don’t stop when you experience your first success. Keep the habit going until it continues without conscious effort.

Fixing mistakes is a must

Everyone fails at things in life. Even at things we’re supposed to be good at. Sometimes, we just make mistakes. We’re not perfect beings. No one believes otherwise, even if they say so when they’re upset. We all know that perfection is a myth.

Yet having said all that, the first thing that still comes to my mind after I make a mistake is, “I hope nobody saw that!” I start thinking of ways to save face, mitigate the damage I might have caused, and get out of it with my ego intact.

Decide on one specific and measurable action step that will help you achieve the results you seek.

As these initial thoughts fade, I think of something author and management expert Amine Ayad tweeted earlier this year. “Be humble to see your mistakes, courageous to admit them, and wise enough to correct them (2).”

I remember a moment where I was faced with this lesson. The stakes were high. I was in charge of redesigning curriculum for an elementary after-school science program. This curriculum covered eight lessons, complete with experiments, lectures, group activities… everything.

We were pushing deadline. In our rush to get everything compiled and all the content added, we missed a formatting piece. Towards the end of the day, when everyone else had already gone for the night, I noticed that half our lessons were formatted differently from the other half. This happened because the compilation of the curriculum had been split between me and another person on the team.

I could have left it. After all, these were for internal use by our instructors. They weren’t getting published for distribution. But I knew the formatting difference would cause confusion for our instructor team. The instructions about how to perform experiments were laid out completely differently between sections and could cause errors or experiments failing in the classroom.

I also could have chosen to pass the buck. My sections were done “correctly” (though by correctly, I mean in my style). This wouldn’t have been kind, or accurate, because we weren’t working off a style guide. There was no defined “right” way of formatting.

Instead, I sighed, called my wife to tell her I’d be home late, and went back to the computer. It took me another two hours to reformat everything. Then, I still had to print the manuals and assemble them. I worked until close to midnight that night.

In the morning, the manuals were ready for distribution to the trainers. The team continued preparing for our upcoming season on-schedule.

When my boss came to work that morning, she noticed the mess of supplies strewn about the main area of the office. When she asked me what happened, I told her of the mistake and apologized for leaving the workplace messy. Even though she thanked me for the effort and told me not to worry about it, I cleaned everything up anyway.

If you want to build trust, see your mistakes before other people do. Own up to them and apologize for them, when necessary. Then make it a priority to clean up after them, mend relationships damaged by them, and correct them.

Trust reflects character

One of the biggest aspects of your core character is integrity. When most people are asked how to best judge someone’s integrity, they’ll speak of trustworthiness. It’s true that how truthful someone is and how well they keep their commitments are a large part of discerning someone’s integrity. But integrity is much more than that.

If you want to build trust, see your mistakes before other people do.

Integrity shows up when we’re under pressure. It’s the measure of the work we’ve done to prepare ourselves to stay true to our values and hold our ideals and standards high. As the pressure intensifies, we see where there are cracks in our integrity. Eventually, we all find a point where our fear becomes too great and our integrity falters.

We can see this at work the clearest in children. My youngest daughter is about to turn three. Like most preschoolers, she loves candy. Also like most three-year-olds, she’s driven more by what she wants than what is right.

I’ve caught her more than once sneaking extra candy, snacks, or other treats from the pantry. The outcome is always the same. I take the treat away. She gets upset. She devises new ways to sneak things in the future.

One day, when she got home from preschool, she went to the pantry and got herself a snack. Totally fine by me. I asked her, “What do you have?” (She had a granola bar in her hands). She said, “Nothing!” Now… I can see the bar in her hands. She’s holding it right in front of her. In the moment, she thought she might be in trouble. In fear of being in trouble, she lied. It wasn’t even a good lie. It was a reflex. She was instinctively trying to protect herself from an imagined punishment.

This is developmentally normal for a preschooler. Unfortunately, many adults still have this instinctive reflex inside of them. They’ve never taken the time to work on building a better response to pressure. They’ve yet to embrace owning their actions and living to the highest version of themselves.

As we’ve already mentioned, if you want to be trusted you must be consistent in your results. When your integrity is cracked, your actions in response to pressure will be inconsistent. Inconsistent actions can never lead to consistent, quality results.

How trustworthy are you?

Because trust is a function of who you are and the results you show, discerning if you’re trustworthy requires checking in with people whose feedback you trust.

Inconsistent actions can never lead to consistent, quality results.

First, take some time to ask and answer these questions by yourself.

• Are you honest with yourself? Trustworthy people take the time to understand their own motives and thoughts.
• Do you keep your commitments? To be trusted, your actions must match your intentions.
• Do you proactively own your mistakes? It’s easy to admit wrongdoing when caught in the act. But people who are worthy of trust admit their mistakes and work to rectify them before others call them out. In many cases, they are cleaning their mistakes before others are even aware a mistake has been made.

Then, ask a trusted friend these questions.

• What is your experience of my ability to keep my commitments?
• How do I act after I’ve made a mistake?
• What could I do to be more trustworthy to you?

Admittedly, these are hard questions to ask someone else, but the insight you’ll gain from their answers can be a game-changer in your relationships. Before you ask these questions, be sure that you’re ready to accept answers that don’t match up with how you perceive yourself and thank them for being honest with you. Once you have reflected on your own questions and gathered answers from a trusted friend, you’ll be able to identify where you may be falling short of your goals and create action steps towards  being more trustworthy and experiencing better relationships as a result. 

Resources

1. John Maxwell, “The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth,” https://www.amazon.com/15-Invaluable-Laws-Growth-Potential/dp/1599953676/
2. Amine Ayad, Twitter Quote, https://twitter.com/the_amine_ayad/status/1379773779631611909