Trust is the primary factor in how people work together harmoniously in projects, are willing to listen to one another, and build effective relationships at every level. Yet many people are unaware of the behaviors and actions that influence trust. Trust is the critical link to creating all healthy and positive relationships, both personal, professional and certainly within any kind of group or community setting.
The capacity levels for trusting means that one has developed a current capacity for trust and is willing to risk trusting others. However, when risking putting one’s trust in others, it is wise to first evaluate the trustworthiness of the individual’s character (such as a leader of a group, etc.), or by assessing the person or groups motivation for its value system, in order to accurately assess if the trust that is being given is appropriate or if it is misguided and misplaced. If a person or group’s main motivation is for power, status or to make profits, at the expense of the human beings involved, that is not a group of people that are trustworthy as its primary goal is shaped with low moral character. Only each person can make that choice themselves to determine if who or what they are building trust with is relative to their personal resonance and spiritual goals.
Trustworthy people know that trust is gained more by stable and consistent ethical conduct than with just thoughts and words. Their daily conduct and treatment of others provides evidence of their intent to be honest, reliable, loyal, unbiased, humble, accountable, cooperative, just and communicative. Our conduct must be motivated by trusting others, in addition to our desire to be trusted by them. Trust is always a two-way interaction or mutual exchange.
Trust is the basis for:
• feeling able to rely or depend upon a person/group, that they will act in accordance to what they say,
• telling the authentic truth even when it is difficult, being trustworthy in all dealings that impact the group and doing so with compassion,
• cooperating with people and experiencing dedicated teamwork within a group,
• observing competency or abilities in creating a stable and consistent environment that is organized around group objectives,
• taking thoughtful risks of vulnerability, such as expressing ones views with honest transparency to others or in a group,
• experiencing believable communications with good intentions felt between parties,
• Getting past previous life experiences that have damaged our trust,
• Forgiving the misplaced trust one has given to people who are untrustworthy,
• Asking the right questions to build confidence that one is not being misled, misinformed and tricked through another’s duplicitous motivations,
• Caring about the people, community and group, treating everyone’s right to be here as equal, unless they are intent on destruction of building trust,
If we feel into the above points, we may be able to really see how incredibly important it is to establish trust in our every communication and be committed to building trust in ourselves in so that we may learn how to find trust with trustworthy people. Without this commitment to build trust and cultivate trust every day in our life - we will not achieve cooperative relationships or collaborative success in creating a community or environments that feels safe, loving, compassionate, caring and humanitarian.
For trust to exist between people or in any organization, a certain amount of transparency must pervade the intentions, direction, actions, communication, feedback, and ways to problem solving. The best way to maintain a trusting relationship interpersonally or in a community environment is to keep from breaking trust in the first place.
So let’s bring to light what breeds “distrust” and breaks down communications between people and groups. These are behaviors of untrustworthy or unsafe people.
• Direct deception of perpetrating a lie for whatever reason, failing to tell the truth, often with the intention to deceive or confuse,
• Lies of omission, deliberate attempts to deceive another person/group by omitting portions of the truth. Lies of omission are particularly egregious as they give people false impressions and attempt to influence behavior by omitting important details,
• Failing to walk the talk, it destroys trust if one fails to demonstrate the quality or behavioral expectation that has been expressed directly to the person/group. It destroys trust to not be reliable and fail to do what you said you were going to do. Words are easy; it is the behavior and motivations that are consistently demonstrated in compassionate actions, even when under tremendous pressure, that helps people/groups build trust,
• Casting blame, insults, put-downs, labels, criticisms, comparisons, and diagnoses which are forms of judgment, as in what is “good or bad” or promoting superior or inferior beliefs on others,
• Making demands that implicitly or explicitly threaten or intimidate others with a form of blaming, shaming, aggression or punishment if they fail to agree or comply with a certain perspective,
• Denial of responsibility via “doublespeak” language that is used to obscure awareness of personal responsibility and accountability to actions,
• Making comparisons or assigning value between people as in judging them,
• Actions of self-entitlement, taking over group resources, many times without consideration for others, lack of self-awareness and lack of considerate comprehension of the influence one’s words, actions or energies have upon others in the group,
• Making assumptions based on half-truths or harmful gossip, jumping on the bandwagon and taking sides of division based on no knowledge of facts and details.
Trustworthy behavior is modeled in the ethical conduct that we observe in people with strong moral character. Strong moral character in partnership with placing value on the ongoing spiritual development of krystic attributes manifest emotionally stable, consistent, balanced, loving, compassionate and peaceful people. When people and our community places value on these moral characteristics as an inspired goal for self-improvement - this creates an invincible strength when the group is unified within community consciousness. If together, in our spiritual communities, we place our dedication to the strengthening of our group moral character in partnership with the Spirit of Christ, it is very hard to interfere with our positive and loving influence on the earth. This is our highest expression and inspiration here.
To make improved choices about where one chooses to place trust with others and how to build strong moral character within, here are some key characteristics of trustworthy people:
Key Characteristics of Trustworthy People:
• Authentic
• Actions and words match
• Able to say “no” respectfully and “yes” dependably
• Keep agreements or renegotiate if necessary
• Able to admit it when they do not know something
• Able to be both flexible and reliable
• Show genuine feeling for you if they need to let you down
• Willing to make compromises but never compromise core principles or personal integrity
• Consistent ethics, positive values, or principles inform their behavior
• Willing and able to tell you things you do not like to hear–kindly
• Able to disagree without needing to argue, or to have friendly disagreements that lead to increased understanding
• Let you know how they feel, where they stand, and how you stand with them
• Able to recognize, accept, and enjoy the differences between you
• After considering others, be sure to turn the same list around on yourself.
To assess trustworthiness is a requirement of having an accurate assessment of conditions, situations and the ethical standards which make up a person’s character or a community’s values. The qualities of trustworthiness will always reveal the deep moral character of a person’s real motivations; hence it is extremely important to understand. In ES community we value all aspects of trust at a high level of which we aspire to model as best we are capable.
With a loving heart, Lisa
Research sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication
positiveenergyguide.com/healing/coming-to-trust-part-4-practicing-trust/