Mmm, can I trust….  you complete the question.  It’s a question that we ask often.  The answer is pretty complicated though.  Trust is more than a feeling.  Relying on intuition and a warm and fuzzy feeling inside us will often let us down.  Trust stands firmly on two legs : Integrity and competence. The integrity leg makes sense to us because we naturally trust honest people with strong moral principles. However, if you are a nervous flyer, and board a plane, you spend far less time thinking about the integrity of the pilot or the aeronautical engineers who serviced the plane and spend much more time thinking about their competence.  In my previous role of leading a wealth and investment business, it became apparent that these two legs of trust applied to our team of wealth managers, stockbrokers, financial planners and fiduciary specialists. When engaging with a client, initially the client wanted to feel that we (the engagement team) had his best interests at heart, would do the right thing and were prepared to walk a long financial journey with him. He was making calls on our integrity.  Then his mind shifted to the competence of the team and he made internal assessments about our knowledge, experience and skill level. Finally, he looked at the brand or institution that we represented and used the two trust pillars (integrity & competence) to make trust assessments on our strength, track record and governance. If we scored high on all three of these we won the deal.  Why : by scoring well on these three assessments we had gained the trust of the client and clients want their money managed by people and institutions they trust.  These assessments in the mind of our clients, or social network, often happen without conscience awareness.  However once I realized very early in my career that trust was the currency of the transaction, I spent most of our time in future client engagements giving the client reason after reason why we could be trusted. 

Clients do have a slight bias toward integrity and relationship over competence. The research done by Dr. Wendy Levenson demonstrates this bias in the field of medicine. Her study recorded hundreds of conversations between a group of physicians and their patients. She split the physicians into two groups. One group had never been sued and the other group had been sued at least twice. These were the findings : Doctors who had never been sued spent more time in consultation with their patients ; they were better listeners ; and they appeared more likable and more empathetic. There was no correlation between skill or ability (competence) and being sued. Their errors were often forgiven because they spent time listening, asking, understanding and building trust. 

If we are to walk the untrodden snow path of trust we must walk on the legs of integrity and competence.  We need to build trust through the continuum if we are to go into this white space.  This means the client must trust the person, the institution we represent, our governance as well as our products and service experience.