Three Types of Trust

Trust: More Important Than Ever

I was talking with a really smart friend of mine yesterday and he brought up some things about trust that I want to run by you.

He said there are three types of trust:

Statutory: A Trust in Institutions (politics, church, media and so on)

Knowledge: Educators, social status, degree’s ect.

Profound: Intimacy based trust/Shared experience.

Institutional trust is gone:

It once was that we respected institutions like the media and politics to guide us but polling shows a huge distrust of both. Add in churches, corporate America, WallStreet and so on, we’ll you see where I’m going with that.

Trust in Knowledge is at an all time low:

Society once respected people who had Dr, PHD, or Professor in front of their name, not anymore.

If someone was wealthy they got respect.

If they taught our kids or acted as an administrator at the kids school we trusted them.

Those days are gone.

But of all the trust levels the most valuable and endangered is profound trust.

With this brand of trust your money, education, title or social status won’t buy it.

Profound trust is earned. It’s intimacy based. It’s being real with people. It’s sharing an experience, going through a tough time.

Of all three levels of trust Profound Trust is the trust culture urns for.

The last few years revealed a nasty side of our society. We lost a lot of trust in decision makers. Tyranny breeds the opposite of trust and when actions reveal the truth followers fall away.

With all that said I think this hyper focus on trust is a good thing.

We were headed on a slippery path trusting people simply because they had a title, money or a perceived knowledge base.

We’ve seen what that knowledge could lead to and in many cases it was a flat out lie.

Liars don’t earn our trust. Manipulators are incapable of profound trust. You see profound trust requires empathy, vulnerability and the person must be willing to draw a line in the sand and stand by it to earn our profound trust.

I believe we are looking for people with a clear set of values. Not necessarily values we completely agree on, just someone willing to stand by the truth. We are also looking for people willing to put their values on the line.

Are you someone like that?

Do you stand for what you believe in or is blending in more your thing.

Trust….now that’s profound.