Predictive Trust vs. Vulnerability-based Trust

As a teacher, I knew that one of the key ways to build trust with my students was through predictive trust. This type of trust, as defined by Patrick Lencioni, relies on repetitive behavior and time. When my students knew me and what to expect from me behaviorally and believed that I would consistently show up in that way; they would trust me, and trust was a core centerpiece of my classroom management. My predictability was essential. 

However, predictable trust cannot be the centerpiece of our organizational cultures for three core reasons: 

1. It inhibits effective onboarding of new staff members. Predictive trust takes a long time to build. Do we really want new staff members to wait months or years before they have built trust in the organization or each other? 

2. It inhibits growth and innovation. Predictive trust essentially means we are doing the same things over and over again, and that is why we are trustworthy. Growth and innovation require the flexibility for change. 

3. It is a real pain in the …. for new leaders. Ask any new leader what the most annoying response they receive from their staff is, and I can almost guarantee it will include, “That’s not how we did it before.” A new leader should have the freedom to be themselves and lead in ways that are not handicapped by past versions of their role, but predictive trust inherently breeds nostalgia–that mysterious, elusive longing for how things used to be. 

The key, then, for organizations is to build vulnerability-based trust, a type of trust that Lencioni suggests allows individuals to ask for help, admit they made mistakes or don’t know the answer, and lift others up as the experts on the team. This type of trust requires us, as organizations and leaders, to embrace a few key moves: 

• Intentional time for sharing our pain points as a team. We need to set aside intentional time to discuss our seemingly impossible barriers. Normalizing that we all have struggles or tasks we don’t know how to solve begins to remove the temptation to hide our small struggles until they become large, organizational struggles, and it enables a natural cross-pollination of ideas and solutions. 

• Curiosity as a shared value. When we collectively practice curiosity, we open the door for deeper understanding and shared learning. If our first instinct is to ask someone else what they know versus sharing what we know, we are creating opportunities to learn from one another and to share the burden of solutions collectively. 

• Allow humans to have human emotions. When I think about this idea, the image of Tom Hanks yelling at Evelyn Gardner in A League of Their Own, “Are you crying? There’s no crying. There’s no crying in baseball!” comes to mind. In our organizations, we need to make room for all of the natural human responses. Instead of demanding that certain aspects of our humanity cease to exist in the context of our organization, what would it look like to instead, create appropriate avenues or places for these emotions or experiences to be felt? Maybe it’s not just about creating a “crying corner” but instead creating space in conversations or meetings for people to name their emotions before they express them all over each other. 

Looking back on my time teaching, I actually wish that I had invested more energy and focus on building vulnerability-based trust. Perhaps, then, my students would have been more open to sharing when they were struggling with a concept, an assignment, or a life-moment. Trust will always be the vehicle for grounding relationships in a sense of safety, but it should not require us to always be predictable.