Should you trust the sales associate who is telling you that it’s a good deal?

Should you trust your teenager to make good decisions at that party tonight?

Should you trust Susan with that big account that just opened up at work?

How do you decide?

You may trust Susan or your teenager in general, but how do you decide how much trust to extend in a specific situation? That’s where the rubber meets the road.

There’s a quick test I picked up as a military planner that we can apply to deciding whether to extend trust or not. In the Army, one of the maxims we followed to keep us from making poor decisions was this:

All assumptions must be valid and necessary.

Since every time we trust, we’re essentially making an assumption, this test applies. So in the scenarios above, the question becomes:

“Is it valid and necessary to trust ____ in this situation?”

“Is it valid…” Valid trust is reasonable trust. It’s trust we can justify logically. You can use the Elements of Trustworthiness to build your case:

• Authenticity: Are they being honest with you?
• Benevolence: Are they aligned with your interests?
• Competence: Do they have knowledge, skills, and judgment?
• Dependability: Can you count on them to come through?

“and necessary…” Necessary trust is trust that fills a need and serves a defined purpose. For example, Here are four possible reasons to trust someone:

• Efficiency: Trusting others frees us to invest our own time, energy, and talents in other ways.
• Synergy: Wise trust between team members yields more productivity and protection than the sum of the individuals alone.
• Reciprocity: One way to facilitate someone trusting you, is to ante up first and trust them.
• Development: As a leader, extending wise trust to a subordinate can cause that person to start trusting themselves.

It’s important to note that validity and necessity must both be met to extend trust wisely. Without validity, you’re taking on too much risk; without necessity, you have no reason to assume the risk in the first place.

So should you trust Susan? Or your teenager? Or the sales associate?

I don’t know; that’s up to you. But before you make your choice, take a moment to consider whether your trust is valid and necessary.

For Reflection: Why do you trust the people you trust?