Trish's Blog

Weird Wisdom Incoming!

Everyone’s talking about trust like it’s the holy grail. But nobody seems to mean the same thing by it. Trust is the new currency. Trust is the foundation of leadership. You’ve read it three times already this week, probably from three people who never once said what they meant.

Here’s what I noticed: nobody argues against trust. There’s no counter-post. Nobody is building a personal brand on less trust, more suspicion. And a word with no opposition is worth being suspicious of, because a word you can’t argue with usually isn’t specific enough to argue with.

It’s joined a small club. Very similar to authenticity, alignment and culture. Words that feel like claims but work like mood lighting. They warm the room and commit to nothing.

So pull it apart. Trust isn’t one thing. It’s at least four.
A feeling. The gut sense that someone is on your side.
An expectation. A prediction that you’ll do what you said.
A behaviour. The act of handing over your keys, your password, your reputation.
A track record. The evidence that someone has come through before.

These four are not the same. A feeling lives in you. A track record lives in the history between you. You can perform the behaviour while feeling none of the feeling.

And most posts slide between all four mid-paragraph and call it insight. Trust is built in small moments (track record) becomes people feel it in their body (feeling) becomes so delegate and let go (behaviour). The word never changes, only the meaning does and the reader never questions it.

Here’s why it matters. When one word means four things at once, you can’t measure it. And when you can’t measure it, advice about it can never be wrong. Build trust with your team survives every outcome. Team thriving? Trust. Team a mess? Not enough trust. It predicted nothing, and it can’t be caught out. That’s exactly why it sells.

I’m not saying trust is a con. The felt sense is real information, your pattern recognition running underneath conscious thought. Reliability between people, someone doing what they said, again and again, is one of the most valuable things in any working relationship. The thing is real. It’s the word that’s been inflated, stretched so far it’s starting to mean nothing precisely because it’s meant to mean everything.

So here’s the discipline. Next time someone says trust, ask four questions. Trust that who, will do what, based on what evidence, over what timeframe.

If they can answer, listen. If they can’t, you’ve caught a mood dressed up as a model.

And catch yourself too. Don’t say I need to trust you more. Say I need you to tell me when something is slipping before it becomes a problem. One is a feeling you’re outsourcing. The other is a request someone can act on.

Which of the four do you see most often, dressed up as the other three?