The last two posts were about the nature of trust and levels of trust that exist between people who work together (here and here).

If common stories are how we build trust in each other, where do people start who have no stories in common? How can two people initiate a business relationship that requires a level of trust to even get started? How can they develop confidence in each other about actions they can’t control?

• Start with realistic assumptions about how much the other individual can trust you.
• Study the other person’s professional life. Companies they’ve worked for and what they did, where they went to school, the arc of their professional development.
• Learn about what they are trying to accomplish and the obstacles they face.
• Find the links between the other person’s stories and your own stories – people, companies, geographies, experiences you might have in common.

Now you have questions to ask, areas to look for connection. You can remind the other person of their own stories in a way that coordinates these past events with the possibility of future events that include you. You can simulate common stories with the other person in order to initiate trust more systematically and quickly.

In the last post I described Schank’s idea on intelligence and storytelling:

Intelligence is our ability to understand what has happened to us well enough to “predict when it might happen again.”�

“We get reminded of what has happened to us previously for a very good reason. Reminding is the mind’s method of coordinating past events with future events to enable generalization and prediction.”

And further that conversations between people strike at the heart of intelligence because they involve reminding.

“Storytelling and understanding are functionally the same thing. Conversation is no more than responsive storytelling. The process of reminding is what controls understanding and therefore, conversation.”

Trust derives from common stories

The level of trust that exists between two people is largely a function of the stories they have in common. The more stories that you have in common with another person, the better able you are to coordinate past events with future events in relation to this person. These common stories allow you to generalize and predict what might happen in the future with this person.

The common stories are strengthened if there was something important at stake in your common experiences (jobs or lives were on the line) and if you faced significant obstacles together (the deal with the customer kept threatening to fall through or the emergency surgeries almost failed).

You may have a long history with your mail carrier, but very little is at stake and you faced few obstacles together that tested your character. But if you were in battle with another person or worked in the same firehouse or raised children with another person, you have a history together. You had something at stake and it tested your character.

If two people are considering doing business together – a project, a deal, a purchase – they need a level of confidence about what the other person will do if far away, or if it is in the future, of if their actions can’t be verified. They need a level of trust. The risk of the business and the level of trust between them will determine whether they will consider moving forward.

You could divide the amount of trust between two people into three levels.

First level – You and the other person have a long and deep relationship. The two of you have faced many obstacles where the stakes were high. You tell each other your common stories until they are the same story. You coordinate these stories in relation to your plans for the future. Because of your history together, you have a high degree of confidence in your ability to face obstacles in the future together, even if you are far away from each other or if what the other person does cannot be verified.

Second level – You and the other person don’t know each other, but you have a third party in common with whom you both have a history and with whom you share many stories. If this third party introduces the two of you, the third party brings up the stories that he or she has in common with each of you and begins to build a story between the two of you – colleges you attended, other friends or family in common, companies where you worked, books you’ve read and places you’ve travelled. The third party coordinates the stories in common with both of you to create an imagined future where the two of you would create your own stories together. The third party uses story to create an initial level of trust between the two of you.

Third level – You’ve never met the other person. You don’t have any third parties in common that can share a story with each of you. The two of you are on your own and you are starting from square one.

If you want to do business with someone, the best person to choose is someone at the First Level where a high level of trust already exists. If that’s not possible, then a good introduction to someone is the next best. You’ll still have to establish trust with each other by building a history of common experiences where you face obstacles where there is something at stake, but the third party gives you a foundation to start from.

The Third Level is the hardest. You are starting from scratch. In the next post we’ll look at how to simulate stories in common with a person at the Third Level that will get you closer to agreeing to initiate a relationship.

He seemed sad, personally dejected. This accomplished engineer – many complex projects to his name, owner of a successful services firm, an enviable reputation with his clients – couldn’t understand why potential buyers didn’t trust him.

“How can I convince potential buyers to trust me? Why can’t I just tell them that they can trust me? I know I’m capable and responsible, my customers know it, why don’t new buyers believe me?”�

To him, it was so illogical.

Which leads to the question, what is trust anyway?

Trust is a confidence about something we can’t directly control, about what is otherwise unknown.

It’s a statement I make to you about

• what I will do when you are far away
• something I will do that cannot be verified
• what I will do at some point in the future

We live in a web of relationships with different levels of trust.

Most people cannot be trusted. Well, let me put it another way. I personally cannot trust most people. Nor can you. I can only trust the people with whom I am directly connected (family, friends, business associates). Or those who are obligated to observe certain rules in relation to me through regulation or contract. Restaurants are obligated by the Board of Health to serve clean, fresh food. Banks are obligated to take care of my money. Regulators force automakers to manufacture safe cars.

As for everyone else, maybe I can trust them, maybe not. But there’s no sense of mutual obligation.

In fact, we are taught not to trust those we don’t know. Witness these proverbs from around the world:

Trust not a new friend or an old enemy. (Portugal)

Trust no one till you have eaten a bushel of salt with him. (Germany)

Trust makes way for treachery. (Arabia)

Trust was a good man; Trust-not was a better. (Italy)

Trust, but not too much. (Germany)

When the character of a man is not clear to you, look at his friends. (Japan)

These proverbs tell us to be careful with our trust, to give our trust to those we have a lot of experience with, and even with those we trust to beware of treachery.

There is really no reason for the engineer to be surprised that potential buyers cannot trust him. It has nothing to do with him. They have been taught and have learned through hard experience not to trust people they don’t know. Especially when the stakes are high, as they are when making a complex purchase like an engineering project.

What can the engineer do? Can he change the level of trust in relation to the buyer? Before we can answer that question we have look at the degrees of trust between people and see where our engineer fits.

That’s what we’ll do in the next post.