Cohere believes that humanitarian action, the act of helping others, should be led by trusting relationships rather than systems. This made me stop and ask: what does trust actually mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Defining trust<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Rousseau and colleagues define trust as “a psychological state comprising the intention to accept vulnerability based upon positive expectations of the intentions or behaviour of another.” Put simply, trust is when you’re willing to connect with someone and \u2018let them in’ because you expect them to treat you well. It has three aspects:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Think of lending a friend money. They might not pay it back, so you’re taking a risk. You lend it anyway because you believe they’re honest and will repay you. That willingness, based on what you expect of them, is trust. Trust between organisations may look different from trust between people, and even between people it can take radically different shapes, but its fundamental elements stay the same. Trust is built one marble at a time. It isn\u2019t a grand gesture. It’s consistency, time, and showing up when it matters most. At Cohere, we started to reflect on these. We acknowledge that our own marble jar is not full. If we can\u2019t count ourselves, we can\u2019t ask other people to give us what we don\u2019t have, so we have to start by trusting ourselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Vulnerability and interdependence<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Trust needs two conditions to grow and flourish: vulnerability and interdependence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Researchers describe trust as the willingness to rely on another person and, in doing so, to make yourself vulnerable. Being vulnerable means accepting the possibility of loss. It comes from uncertainty: we don’t know how another person intends to act, or whether they will act as expected. If an action were certain and there were no possibility of loss, trust would not be necessary. Vulnerability creates the opportunity for trust, and our willingness to be vulnerable is what leads us to take risks. We accept that vulnerability because we have confidence in, and positive expectations of, the other person’s intentions and behaviour. We expect them to act in a way that is positive, reliable and consistent with those expectations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At Cohere, we see these tensions in our work every day, and we see how they limit the success of refugee-led organisations (RLOs) and their impact in their communities. Donors in the aid sector have tried to use formal controls to protect themselves from vulnerability, but these controls undermine trust in their relationships with partners. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The second condition for trust between people or organisations is interdependence. It exists when two parties need one another, and neither can fully achieve their goals without the other. Trust therefore develops in relationships where people depend on one another and share values, interests or goals. I find it hard to believe that we can help each other without first accepting that we need each other. We might get different things from the relationship. One side might need money, and the other might need the validation and good feeling that comes from helping someone. It is an exchange. We don’t see this acknowledged in the humanitarian sector, where givers don’t recognise that they also depend on grant recipients, whether to meet their goals or to feel validated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sadly, as a sector, we have relied too heavily on benchmarks and guidelines we are told to follow or meet to prove we are achieving our mission: to do good and help others. Ultimately it is a human instinct and so to not have direct interactions and take time to learn about each other then it can be almost impossible to establish genuine trust. It has to go beyond the paper work, and be based on an approach of learning and listening.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n How trust changes<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Trust isn’t a behaviour, such as cooperating with colleagues, and it isn’t simply a decision to take a risk. It is an underlying psychological state that shapes, and is shaped by, the actions people take within a relationship. Trust can havedifferent stages: the building of trust; the stability of trust; and the decline of trust. Trust can grow or shrink depending on the level of vulnerability and interdependence in that relationship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because vulnerability and interdependence are both necessary for trust it means that changes in them over the course of a relationship can alter both the level and the form of trust. Take a new or temporary partner, or a colleague you have known for only a few weeks or months. The chance that they might disappoint you may be high, and your interdependence may be low so trust will be low. The opposite is true when you look at the same relationship after a couple of years of working together: by then, trust will be more established. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Because trust is a feeling, no amount of guidelines can help an organisation train its staff to build it. Sadly, as a sector, we have relied too heavily on benchmarks and guidelines we are told to follow or meet to prove we are achieving our mission: to do good and help others. Ultimately it is a human instinct and so to not have direct interactions and take time to learn about each other then it can be almost impossible to establish genuine trust. It has to go beyond the paper work, and be based on an approach of learning and listening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This raises an important question for humanitarian action: if trust is built through vulnerability and interdependence, what does it mean for an organisation to trust the people and organisations it works with truly?<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cohere believes that humanitarian action, the act of helping others, should be led by trusting relationships rather than systems. This made me stop and ask: what does trust actually mean? 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