Build Quality Relationships With These 7 Trust-Boosting Factors
How do we build quality relationships?
We know it takes more than love alone. Fulfilling relationships require several ingredients, such as quality time, acts of service, physical affection, words of affirmation, and receiving gifts (according to Dr. Gary Chapman's book, The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts).
What’s missing: TRUST.
Maintaining a relationship without trust is challenging.
Let’s look at what elements define a trusting relationship, according to Dr. Brené Brown, and what to do when we have a trust breach.
We can use the acronym BRAVING to help us remember the 7 elements:
Boundaries
Reliability
Accountability
Vault
Integrity
Non-judgement
1) Boundaries are what’s okay and not okay.
You’ll often recognize that a boundary is needed because you feel a pang of resentment. For example, if a family member asks to borrow money but hasn’t paid back the money they borrowed last month, you might feel resentment. What are you going to do now? Maybe they really need the money. Maybe you feel obligated to help. It’s not easy to know what to do.
Asking someone to pay you back is a request and the first step in boundary setting. A boundary is usually an action, such as leaving the room or hanging up the phone if someone calls you names. The reason why making a request isn't enough is because we don't control other people. They may not be able or willing to comply with the request.
Therefore, if we don't want to be around certain behaviors, then we need to take action. Sometimes, setting a boundary may be uncomfortable because when we care about people, we want to help manage their discomfort.
We're often told that it's our responsibility to take care of other adults, even to our detriment. This isn't true and does not benefit us in the long run. We're just as important as others, and
if we have the time, capacity, and desire, we can certainly decide to engage.
However, Brené also often says, “Choose discomfort over resentment.” This quote has been very helpful in my life. On the flip side, I would not want anyone saying yes to a request of mine if they didn’t really want to. I would rather someone be honest and say no to me rather than be put out or upset.
As we get more consistent with making requests and following through with boundaries, we’ll have to do it less often. People will start to believe you’ll follow through with action when you ask them to do something. In the borrowing money example, an action could be that you won’t lend more money until the original sum is paid back, or perhaps you make a new rule that you won’t lend money again.
You'll build trust with yourself and others because you'll be true to your word and reliable.
Here’s how resentment happens:
a. Resentment is a thought that leads to a feeling.
b. A request is made.
c. An action enforces the request.
2. Reliability is saying what you mean and meaning what you say.
I realized I had a reliability problem when I got swamped (because I was a people pleaser and said yes to everything instead of setting boundaries for myself and others). I wasn’t able to make deadlines or arrive on time anymore. I thought the answer was to work harder, smarter, and longer.
That didn’t work out so well for me. I prioritized being reliable and started setting realistic timelines and saying no to everything I didn’t want to do. It was uncomfortable at first, but it got easier, and I became reliable again.
3. Accountability is when you hold yourself and others responsible for their thoughts, feelings, and actions.
When I first heard this definition of accountability, I interpreted it as giving people shit when they did something wrong. I have now expanded my definition and taken the judgement out of it. To me, accountability is now about owning my stuff when it impacts others (it still feels like a gut punch for a second) and recognizing that other people are responsible for the consequences of their actions, too.
We're often worried about hurting other people’s feelings if we let them know we’ve been hurt by something they’ve said or done.
God forbid we make anyone else feel uncomfortable. But it's an assumption that other people will feel a certain way, and ultimately, we're not responsible for other people.
Remember what I said earlier? We don't control other people. Shielding them from information or experiences that could lead to learning is short-term gain for long-term pain. It’s not easy facing consequences, but that’s how we learn about boundaries (revisit #1).
People don't change when everything is comfortable and easy. People change when there’s a reason to do so.
4. Vault isn't sharing what isn't yours to share and not listening to things that aren’t yours to hear.
A perfect example of vault is gossip. When I was a kid, I used to think that other people never talked about me. When I talked to my BFF about the boys I liked, I assumed they’d never tell a soul.
Over many years of hard-won experience, I realized that it's human nature to tell stories and gossip. My secrets are safe with the very few people who have earned my trust but not everyone has a vault.
5. Integrity is doing what’s right over what’s fun, fast, or easy.
Doing the right thing means facing the consequences and potentially disappointing people. It also means living with a value that can guide your choices when you’re not sure what to do. Having integrity helps us make decisions that may not be popular or fun but ultimately help us to feel good about ourselves and build trust with others. The paradox of integrity is that it can feel challenging in the short term but good in the long term.
6. Non-judgement.
Holding judgement is challenging because our brain likes to cope with shame by finding people doing worse than we are in areas of life where we feel shame and judging them for it so that we feel better about our lives.
Ironically, judgement isn’t about the other person. It’s a mirror for our perceived weaknesses. When we become aware of our judgemental thoughts, we can start to heal the insecure parts of ourselves with self-compassion. We become nicer and more accepting of imperfections.
7. Generosity can take many forms, but in this case, it's about our assumptions of others.
It's natural for our human brain to have a negativity bias that perceives all potential threats. But, the reality is that most people are self-centred and spend less thinking about other people. This is good news because when things don’t go our way, we often make up a story that the other person is a jerk or trying to make us mad on purpose.
When we make generous assumptions and think thoughts like, “I wonder what I would do in their situation?” then we can believe the best about people. I’m not sure that there’s any scientific research that says that people are doing the best they can, but I know that believing this makes my life better, and I’m less reactive and more curious if I believe that they are.
Trust is built in small moments and can also be broken in small moments.
As you were reading over the seven elements, did any stand out for you? Rate yourself on these seven elements above and see if there are any that you could use some work on.
Choose one and put some effort into it for a few weeks. See if you can make progress like I did with being reliable.
Conversely, think about a relationship where you struggle to get along.
Which element of trust has been most impacted? Once you’ve identified this, you now have the language to have a conversation about the issue. Instead of simply saying, “I don’t trust you,” you can say, “A vault issue is impacting the trust I have in you. I believe you’re doing the best you can, but I wonder if you would be open to taking responsibility for sharing a sensitive piece of information with our friends at the party.”
When trust has been impacted, the best thing to do is apologize and make amends. If I was the one who shared some information that wasn’t meant to be shared, whether on purpose or by accident, it’s important to apologize and figure out a way to clarify what’s okay to talk about and what’s not. For example, “It’s okay to share that we've been spending time with Tom and Jerry, but it’s not okay to tell people that they're getting a divorce.”
We're imperfect human beings, and all relationships will face breaches of trust from time to time.
It’s important to be aware of these elements of trust, recognize that small investments or withdrawals add up over time and that there are concrete ways you can build and maintain trust with the people you care about!
