How The Top 1% Actually Think About Trust

Why don't you trust me? Right? Something that we might say to somebody or you might say the reverse is like, "Just trust me." And that word, people have a very hard time of knowing like, "What the hell does that even mean? What does trust even mean?" And so, this is a departure from my normal business content, but I think you will like it, or at least I do. And so, I was thinking about this because someone recently was like, "Hey, trust me." And I was like, "Huh, that's an odd command. What does that even mean?" And so, I want to break down number one, what does trust actually mean from a behavior perspective? How can I look at someone and say trust has occurred here? Right? And then, are there different types of trust? So that, which is what confuses this whole thing because there isn't just one, there's actually four. And this is after actually thinking about this one statement that a friend made to me. And so, the four types of trust actually correspond with two big variables, which is who's at risk and who does the punishing. So, woah, woah, slow down. So, you're saying trust is about punishment? The answer is yes. So, if I trust someone, it means that I make myself punishable by them. So, for example, if I say, "I'm going to share a secret with you," then it means I give you something that you can punish me with. And the idea is that I believe I'm making a bet that you're not going to punish me. And that's the risk, right? And so, the idea is we have you who are at risk, so you risk. And then, we have the other person uh punishing, right? That's the first type. The second type of risk is that someone else does the risking with you, and they say, "I'm going to give you a secret. I'm going to give you a knife and you can point it at my back, and I'm going to bet that you're not going to stab." All right? So, now you're the one who can punish them. That means that you are being trustworthy to them. I'm going to give you prescriptions on how to actually do this because this has been so helpful for thinking about this through like a relationship. Like, imagine Layla and I were married, and I want her to trust me more, and she wants me to trust her. So, it's like, how can we actually prescribe, do these things to gain trust? And this is what I want to talk about, and that's what we're we're to do. All right? Let me just cover the other two. So, if you're at risk, who else is the possible punisher? Well, it's the environment. So, that means that reality punishes you. So, what does that actually look like? That would be "Hey, can I trust you to pick my kid up tomorrow?" Right? Sure. How would that happen? Well, I'm going to give them something, two different things, that I that I value a lot. They could punish me. They could kidnap my kid. That would suck, right? Or they could not pick up my kid, also would suck. Are they the one doing the punishing? Well, kidnapping, yes. But, if they just didn't keep their word and just didn't pick the kid up, the environment would do the punishing, right? Now, to the same degree, someone can trust me, and it can't just doesn't always have to be about action, like me doing something for someone else. It can also be about advice. So, if I'm like, "Man, I really trust her. I trust her advice. She has good insight." Right? Then, I might follow that advice, and a bad thing would happen, and then I'd be like, "I don't trust her that much. She gives terrible advice." Right? And so, these are the four conditions. So, you basically have secrets or information, right? That someone can give you, or someone or you can give someone, that they can use and hurt you. Or, you give someone your word that you're going to do something, either make it happen, or that they should do it. And in either of those scenarios, the environment does the punishing. All right? Here's the thinking process around, "Should I do this?" So, two questions. Number one, do they have a track record of protecting what they've been given, the things and information that you've given to them, right? Have they had a knife before pointed at your back and not used it? And, does burning you cost them more than protecting you? AKA, is betraying you a bad deal for them? And so, if both of those scenarios, meaning they gain more from protecting you, number one, and number two, they have a track record of not burning you, then it makes sense to go forward with the trust. Now, why would you trust to begin with if we define trust as allowing yourself to be punishable? Because the ceiling of a relationship potential is based on the shared context that both people have about each other. If I had a stranger as the completely opposite extreme, there's a limit to how much I can help someone if I don't know anything about them. And so, every single thing that we volunteer about ourselves gives the other person context. Now, the more someone knows about you, the more they can hurt you, right? And so, the idea is a perfectly trusting relationship would allow both people to best serve one another. The difficulty is that humans often times have short-term incentives that are adverse to their long-term goals. I'll give you an example. So, if I trust my wife and I say, "You know, I don't like my mother." I'm making this up, all right? And later, in a fight, my wife uses what I told her about my mother, and it could be tomorrow or it could be 6 months from now. If she uses that against me, then I'm going to be way less likely to trust her again. But, it means that the calculus that my wife has to make in the moment when I've given her something valuable is that she has to say, "Me winning this argument in the short term is not worth the cost of losing the relationship." And so, what's really difficult about trust is trust, almost more than anything else, is based on zero punishment. So, what does that mean? So, it means that you give someone a little bit of thing and they don't do anything bad with it. You give them a little bit more, don't do anything bad. You give them a little bit more, you give them a little bit more. And then, eventually, the the incentive for them is so high to wrong you that they do. And that sucks. And so, when they do that one time, and people I mean, think about Think about the relationships, the marriages where it's like, "I trusted him for 20 years." You know, and then like, "Boom, he did that one thing, and that was it. Could never trust him again." Right? It's because the punishing event of betraying someone will literally undo all the reward and reinforcement cycles you did beforehand. Which is why if you want to be trustworthy, you have to do zero punishment. And that means both at when they disclose the thing, someone says, "Hey, I'm coming out of the closet. I'm gay now." The moment they give you the thing for sure is a reinforcing event to make sure that you not only want to be neutral, but like, "Thanks for sharing that. Your secret's safe with me. It's your news. Whatever you want me to do with it, I'll do with it. All right? The second thing is that it doesn't get used in the future against them. So, not like necessarily talking to them, but like if you share it with somebody else, and then that person hurts them, they still don't trust you and won't want to trust you, and then you get a reputation of somebody who's loose lips Loose lips sink ships, right? And so, if you want people to trust you, and you want to trust them, then you need to make sure that they are trustworthy, which means have they followed the prescription of becoming trustworthy now or just online? And this The reason that I think you have to do it with every time you share something, especially if it's material. Obviously, you're not calculating every single decision, right? But when it's a material thing, calculating it independently and thinking, wait, if I give this thing, the incentive is way too big. Like, what do I gain from this versus what do I risk? And fundamentally, this is Some people see this and think, oh, this is just so transactional. And I think I think you're wrong, and I think you're dumb. I'll be really honest with you. Um we all make this appraisal of plusses and minuses in our minds on some level. I'm just trying to clearly define it so that I can recognize when I'm like, I don't trust this guy. I can actually ascribe a filter being like, why don't I trust him? Oh, when did I make myself punishable that he used against me? Oh, in these specific scenarios. And then that way, when the person's like, why don't you trust me? It's like, well, here's four reasons. I told you this, and then you used it this way. I told you this, and you used it this way. And so, the equal opposite is like, I want to be a trustworthy person because gaining trust with other people gives you a lot of stuff. So, number one is it makes you more influential. If you have trust, you haven't used anything that someone else has said to hurt them, then they will trust you with more things, which means that your ability have contacts on them is higher. Number two, if they trust your advice, the other type of trust, and they follow your prescriptions, and good things happen, the likely they follow the future prescriptions goes up. If you say, I'm going to pick up the kid, and then you do, the likely that they'll trust you pick up the kid in the future goes up, which also means that we have to keep our word. And so, whenever you have the opportunity to break your word, that is at a short-term benefit to you, realize that you do not harm the relationship, you likely end it. It just doesn't die immediately. It's kind of like cutting a tree off the vine. The tree's still there for a long time, and sometimes there's a hollowed-out dead tree on the inside. It's still there visibly, but we all know it's dead on the inside. The The The stream of nutrients, which we can see truth as nutrients in a relationship, it gets cut off the moment someone betrays somebody else. And so, I would use this frame, and I'm using this now, cuz I'm giving a presentation tomorrow to my company, um sharing something that that's that they could use to hurt me, but I'm trusting them by making myself punishable, which gives everyone else in the business the opportunity to earn more of my trust. Which, to be fair, I've already given it to them. It's really theirs to lose. 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