Trust is an essential ingredient in all kinds of relationships — and in the workplace, it works (and fails to work) the exact same way as it does in families, friendships, and couples.

The definition of trust is: I make something that's important to me vulnerable to your actions. The definition of distrust that follows is: what's important to me is not safe with you.

With these definitions having consistently emerged from the data, it's obvious that trust is inherently related to vulnerability. This, in turn, prompts the question: How do we know who we can trust? Who are people with whom vulnerability is safe? And, how what does this fundamental questions (and the answer to it) look like on the scale of an organization? How we go about systemic trust and distrust, in terms of building the image of a commercial brand or running a government that delivers on its promises?

As with many key topics in my research, the answer is paradoxical. On the one hand, we have clear findings around which behaviors build trust and which breed distrust. On the other hand, there's no way to start building trust without first being vulnerable, i.e. exposing ourselves to the risk of being harmed. Probabilistically, this risk goes down exponentially as trust gets slowly built, but it always remain. The model I use for it, especially when working with leaders in finance, is a credit bonus system. Here it goes.

When you apply for a credit card in the bank, the bank does some basic checks before the approve your application. They check your residence permits, your current employment records, and these days use some algorithms to check your credit history. If everything's okay, they issue you a card with a small credit amount. Then, depending on your financial behavior, this amount can change. If you use the card reasonably, don't miss your billing dates and your fees, then the amount of trust the bank has for you increases, and so does, literally, the credit amount on your card. If you don't pay the loan on time, perform suspicious transactions maxing out your credit account, or otherwise violate the rules you arranged to adhere to in the contract, the credit amount decreases and the card can even get blocked. Just like no person likes to be abused, any financial institution assesses the risk of harm based on your past behavior.

It functions the same way in our relationships, including those in the workplace. We first extend basic trust to other people, and occasionally offer a small amount of vulnerability. Then, depending on our vulnerability gets treated, trust grows or diminishes. There are behaviors that harm trust so badly that it gets almost dead, or broken beyond repair. Abuse is one of them.

Lack of trust in the organizational culture is a huge issue. It hampers delegation of work and distribution of responsibility. It corrodes collaboration. It becomes the reason why people don't get promoted despite their technical qualifications and why team leaders fail to run their teams efficiently. The hard thing is, it's way too hard to talk about trust directly when you experience issues with it. Most people immediately jump on the defensive and stop hearing you whenever your messages questions their trustworthiness. It feels like a personal attack even when it's not meant so.

If we can't talk directly about trust problems, how then are we supposed to address them?

One of the best solutions is the B.R.A.V.I.N.G. component model of trust described by Brené Brown. In it, Brené deconstructs trust into seven observable and measurable behaviors that can be directly addressed and reality-checked. This model is just as powerful for personal relationships as it is for our relationships with ourselves (self-trust), but below I will elaborate the components in the context of organizational culture.

1. Boundaries. We're clear about what's okay and what's not okay for us. In the workplace, we don't expect other people to guess where our boundaries lie, and then feel resentment when their guesses are off — instead we make our boundaries clear and hold others accountable for respecting them. In the same way, we make it normal for others to communicate their boundaries and commit to respecting those.
2. Reliability.We don't throw around promises and commitments without first thinking about our competencies. We only commit to what we can deliver at the arranged quality within the arranged timeframe. We don't hustle for self-worth, so we don't end caught up in the dynamic where we say yes to everyone and everything, just to make sure we're liked and approved.
3. Accountability.When we make a mistake, we own it, apologize, make amends, and embed the learning in order to avoid it in the future. We don't blame, deny, rationalize or play a fool because we don't slip into shame. Organization has the responsibility of monitoring for shame infestation in the culture in order for accountability to be alive. The same thing applies to our relationships with customers: if a technical slip-up on our side causes them costs of any type, we own and reimburse it. Unless we're consciously making our brand into a cult, we don't expect our customers to deny their negative experience with our products and services. If we try to manipulate them into this denial, trust collapses (big examples in research: Apple, Mercedes-Benz, etc.)
4. Vault.We respect the NDAs (non-disclosure agreements). If we're not sure about whether, with whom, and why the information can be shared, we ask its owner about it. We don't misappropriate information and then use it for our personal gain. We don't use other people's stories as a social currency. We don't support the gossip culture, and we don't reward people who bring us stories and data that aren't theirs to share.
5. Integrity.We get crystal clear about our personal and organizational values, and we establish straightforward ways to monitor how much our value vision aligns with our real-life practices. When in communication with our customers, including marketing, we don't profess the values that we don't understand or aren't willing to practice, especially around social justice and other hot cultural topics. We don't use overhyped movements and trends as marketing leverages, instead we believe in our own values and the audience who truly shares them.
6. Non-judgment. We don't attach judgment to needing help and asking for help in the workplace. We dispel the mythology that receiving help is a sign of weakness of professional incompetence; just like we don't reinforce that notion that the one giving help receives a bonus to their worth or respectability. We appreciate that giving and receiving help are both equally important parts of our experience as a social species. We realize and embed the value of exchanging help as a booster of team's predictor and a predictor of its growth.
7. Generosity. When something goes wrong in our relationships, we assume positive intent on the part of the other person unless we have solid evidence (not just a story we made up!) to believe otherwise. We practice the discomfort of sharing the stories of our emotionally disturbing experiences with people who get involved in them, so that assumptions can be reality-checked in the present and then followed up through future behavior.

Unlike the vague, big word trust, these components can be transparently measured and addressed. Remarkably, my most recent data suggest that they aren't linked just within this theoretical model; instead, their connection likely has a solid neurobiological underpinning. Doing focus groups, and then running a set of randomized trials with teams, I observed that even in people unfamiliar with the model in theory, experienced dysfunctions in one domain of trust lead to expectations of dysfunction in other domains. For example, if we experience failures of reliability with a person, our estimates for their integrity and accountability become significantly lower, and so does our level of vulnerability in those domains. Overall, it suggests that all seven pieces need to be exposed on the organizational scale when braving conversations about, and the work of incrementally building, trust.