Charles Feltman did some groundbreaking work on creating trust. He found that the most important factor in building trust is caring. Caring is key to building high-levels of trust in teams and organizations. It has to be embedded into the DNA of a team and organization.
When someone truly cares about another person, trust can be created in even in absence of other three key factors (sincerity, reliability, and competence).
You’ve known people that care about you and have your back. Perhaps they do things like showing up late all the time, may have told a lie here or there, may not be the most competent person, etc. You still keep them in your life because you know they care.
But it doesn’t work the same for any other three individual factors. For example, if someone is competent, but they don’t care about you, and they aren’t sincere and reliable, we don’t trust them.
Action: If you buy into the philosophy that your business and personal life is completely separate at work, you will eventually fall on hard times. Not only won’t you be able to create psychological safety, people won’t put themselves on the line for you. The requirement is to go all in and care about others.
