Trust - What is it.

You have been demanding more frequent letters from me.  But if we compare the accounts, you will not be on the credit side. We had indeed made the agreement that your part came first, that you should write the first letters, and that I should answer.  However, I shall not be disagreeable; I know that it is safe to trust you, so I shall pay in advance (Senaca, AD37-41/1932, p.361)

This passage from Senaca’s (A roman statesman and philosopher) writings was one of the earliest references I could find to the concept of trust. Three things struck me about my research into the history of trust philosophy and psychology: 1) That there were very few conversations about it before Seneca’s letter; 2) There has been very little discussion of it since then up until the mid-20^th century; 3) How closely Senaca’s sentiment matches contemporary conceptual modeling of trust.

I really adore this letter, because it encompasses so much of what trust is about; and let’s be clear, trust is an amazingly difficult to codify and complex idea. When you look at what Senaca writes, he is purposely putting himself in a state of risk. Now we could argue the risk isn’t that great, but thousands of years ago, letter writing was a sign of position and respect. Yet in this case, Seneca is stating clearly that he is willing to take this risk because he feel safe in his believe that his actions will be reciprocated.

This really gets to the root of trust, why it’s important, and why violation of trust is so catastrophic psychologically.  Trust is the believe that you can take risk because you know the trustee has both the desire and the ability to take actions which protect you from that risk. The classic example Deutsch (the modern father of psychological trust research) offers is when you leave your child with a babysitter you are trusting them because you are putting yourself at great risk (harm to your child) for relatively small gain (a night out). Because you trust the babysitter it lets you do things which your cost-benefit analysis would normally preclude.

The idea extends to political science, organizational development, and sociology. These concepts of trust, share trust, inherited trust, and so forth allow our society to achieve goals which would otherwise be impossible. Some sociologists argue that money has value not only because we trust the government, but because we trust one another to trust the government. This has been one of the challenges to alternative currency. Getting people to question the government might not be difficult for some, but getting them to also trust that everyone else will question the government is a far higher bar.

Interpersonal trust is really about two people having a share view of future reality. Knowing your spouse will be home on time, knowing they have the same views of how money should be spent, knowing your friend will show up on time. When this concept of shared vision gets destroyed, then there is no bases for trusting the intent or ability of the trustee and trust quickly decays.

Now from an organizational standpoint, why do I care? This is a question I get a lot when I talk to organizations and business leaders about change and trust, and that question will get answered in my next post.

Resistance to Change - is it really about fear?

If you were to ask a collection of managers and executives 'why do employee resist change?', you will generally get a simple answer - Fear. This question and answer has become almost gospel in management education. Yet, managers need to be aware that both the assumption in this question (that employees do resist change) and the common answer (fear) are counter to a significant amount of research. So let us tackle each part in turn.

First, do employees resist change? Dent and Goldberg in 1999 wrote a fantastic paper titled “Challenging ‘resistance to change’”. They essentially, and I believe accurately, argue that employees don’t resist change; they simply resist bad things happening to them. For instance, if you are telling employees that they will all receive a 20% salary cut, one should expect employees to resist such a scenario. This however is not ‘resistance to change’. It’s ‘resistance to bad things happening to me’. Managers need to understand that when they initiate a change, there may be employees negatively impacted by the change.

This leads to the false answer to the question: that employees resist change out of fear. I argue that it is not fear of the change that causes resistance, but instead two potential influences. The first, as described above, is fear of less. The second is uncertainty of the future. Often change, even natural or positive change is shrouded in uncertainty. Reorganizations may actually provide an employee with new opportunities, but they potentially come with new coworkers, new bosses, new skills to learn, and so forth.

Uncertainty is a condition we naturally avoid and/or fight. It is a very instinctive reaction based in our fight-or-flight survival mechanics. When people are unsure of what to expect, they naturally prepare for the worst and this leads to anxiety, stress, and eventually physiological and psychological distress.

There are several lessons for management to draw from this. First, this further emphasizes the importance of employee trust in management. Effective, transparent, and trusted communication is seen is one of the most effective means to limit stress during change. Second, while contrary to common industry practice, times of change are a moment to increase communication with employees, not limit it.

In my experience, both as a management consultant and as an internal manger, I have observed this phenomena many times. Unfortunately, the ‘employees resist change’ mantra has become so accepted that leaders do not seek to discuss change with their employees as they feel it will increase stress. However, this lack of communication is one of the primary factors in the very stress they are looking to avoid. By having open, honest, and trusting communication with employees, leaders can potentially limit the amount of stress employees experience during change and improve the potential for change success.

Dent, E. B., & Goldberg, S. (1999). Challenging 'resistance to change.'. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 35(1), 25-41. doi:10.1177/0021886399351003

Prepare for some quiet

I wanted to forewarn that this blog will get a little quiet over the next few weeks. I'm starting to work on the next couple chapters of my dissertation and this will be taking up most of my time. I will try and put up some thoughts when I can.

One thing to think about, and comment if you wish, how does it feel when you trust someone. Describe the feeling it gives you?

While honesty and trust are not the same, they are closely related. So I leave you with my favorite quote on the topic of honesty:


“I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you”
Friedrich Nietzsche

Upcoming talk: How to lead through change

On May 9th, 2013 in Baltimore, MD I will be presenting my research and (preliminary) findings at the Eastern Academy of Management conference. My presentation, "Trust as a method for moderating uncertainty and stress during organizational change", gives leaders and managers an understanding of why employees experience stress along with some preliminary findings and implications for leaders.  This talk is valuable for researchers and practitioners alike.

This talk covers the origins of the problem, why I used a methodology which is not traditionally used, and how this uncovered some new and exciting ideas. There are a lot of valuable lessons for researchers and leaders in this presentation. Since the publication of the abstract, I have performed my initial synthesis of research and speak to those findings. 

For those who have read Covey's 'Speed of Trust' - this talk fills in the gaps which have frustrated organizations as they try and develop a trusting culture: What is trust really, how does it work, why does it work, and who does it work for in what situations.


Abstract of talk:
Organizational change is widely recognized as disruptive and potentially distressful to employees leading to diminished performance and organizational commitment. This paper represents a work in progress investigating whether trust can moderate the negative experiences associated with change. By way of systematic review, the author proposes that the stress experienced during organizational change is a manifestation of uncertainty leading to anxiety. Under continuous change, this manifestation reaches a breaking point resulting in employee psychological and physiological distress. To counter this, the author also proposes that a trusting environment can increase the certainty in an organization and decrease stress during change.

I'm so stressed!!!! - Now what does that even mean?

Warning: This is a little dry, but I think it's important to understand in order to discuss the topic

In order to understand how we can moderate stress, the first task is to have a better understanding of what stress is. In conversation we use many abstract concepts and assume we all have a common understanding specific to the context. When your friend say they love pizza, you understand they are not romantically interested in the pizza. In a similar sense, we talk about someone being our friend, yet again, that is very abstract. Ignoring the Facebook definition of "friend", what does a friend mean? Try and think about how one might define it. One of the challenges is that a friend can take on many meanings depending on the context of the situation and there are many intensities of friendship. Yet, in conversation we often use such terms very loosely.

So when we want to study stress, we are confronted with a similar issue. We want to study a concept that one would think is well defined, but we encounter a number of questions: what is stress, is it something we always want to avoid, are there some benefits, how does it fit into our other psychological and physiological reactions, and so forth. After all, as famously stated, you can't study something until you can measure it.

Colloquially, we use stress in a number of ways. One could consider the word being used to described three distinct constructs the encompass stress (O'Sullivan, 2011). Stress can indicate the stressor, this is, the source of stress e.g. “This is a stressful job”. It can also be used to describe an individual’s response to an event e.g. “I get stressed by speaking in public”. Finally, stress can be the condition of an individual after having experienced an event e.g. “I am feeling stressed today”. In my work I am really thinking about the last type, that is, the final condition. 

I categorize stress into three types, of which the last is of specific interest to me: physical, mental, and psychological. The last two may sound similar  but I will explain the discrepancy  It's also worth noting that just because someone is experiencing psychological stress, it may have negative impacts on their physical and mental capabilities. Physical stress is what we do to our bodies when we exert ourselves, and this is the most objective form of stress. One can measure the tension put on muscles, and breaking point, the recovery rate, and so forth. Most of us know that the way we grow muscles is by straining our bodies, tearing fibers, and having them grow back bigger (I am far from an expert, so I apologize if I butchered that description). This is actually a very interesting dynamic, stress is damaging to our bodies, but can have some positive long-term outcomes. However, it's also true that one can over-exert physically and end up hurting oneself quite bad in the form of a torn muscle.

Mental stress is that pain you feel after you've just taken a tough math test. You think you did well, but just the activity of recalling information, processing and analyzing problems and so forth wears out your  brain. There is a reason after such a test you feel wiped out, often feeling it physically, as this is a very draining activity. I'm not sure there is a good parallel to pulling a muscle when it comes to mental stress, but it certain makes for a good cartoon.

Finally, there is psychological stress, and as I said, this is what I'm studying in my work. While mental stress comes from processing analytically activity, psychological stress comes from the impact of scenario testing and decision making. This is what I call uncertainty-based stress, the energy we are expending to handle the amount of scenarios and decisions we must consider. For those interested, I highly recommend Hirsh, Mar, and Peterson's (2012) paper on Psychological Entropy. In essence, we expend energy every time we have to calculate how to handle a situation. The more certain we are of various factors in a situation (how others are likely to act for instance) the fewer scenarios we must consider and therefore the less energy we need to expend. To make matters worse, due to our evolutionary design, when we lack information, we often fill in with danger and negative events. In essence, when we don't know what to expect, we prepare for fight or flight.

Despite discredited comments that we only use 10% of our brains, the truth is our brains run close to 100% at all times. Therefore, as we have to consider more and more scenarios, our minds fatigue in the same manner as when taking an exam. People often refer to this fatigue as anxiety or feeling anxious. They don't know what to expect, so their brains go into a very high gear preparing for the unknown and this makes us jumpy and tired.

So, to bring this all back to the original objective, stress, as I use the term, is that fatigue employees experience due to the uncertainty of change. As organizations go through change, big and small, there is a whole lot of uncertainty about the future. This is due to many factors including: unknown variables, information known by leadership but not shared with employees, poor communication, distrust in leadership, and what a generally unknown and uncertain future. In any situation this would be a challenge, but in the current environment, ripe with distrust it is much worse.

Next time I will touch on the heart of my research - TRUST!


Hirsh, J. B., Mar, R. A., & Peterson, J. B. (2012). Psychological entropy: A framework for understanding uncertainty-related anxiety. Psychological Review, 119(2), 304-320. doi:10.1037/a0026767

O'Sullivan, G. (2011). The relationship between hope, eustress, self-efficacy, and life satisfaction among undergraduates. Social Indicators Research, 101(1), 155-172. doi:10.1007/s11205-010-9662-z

Catching up

So it has been over a year since I've written, and some of that is my design….but a lot of it is due to always having something else that needed to be done. In the last year and a quarter I have made tremendous progress towards my dissertation and I want to start reengaging the conversation about it.

When I stopped writing I was unsure what direction my work was going to take and quite honestly there was so much chaos in my mind, trying to deliver coherent posts was difficult. In addition, I was not at a point where I felt I could effectively convey what I was trying to say. Now, I feel like I am at a place where I know what I’m working on, I’m far enough along to have confidence it’s not going to change drastically (famous last words), and finally I feel I have a grasp on how to express it.

Over the next few posts I am going to cover my area of research as well as my method of approach. I am also going to start posting some abstracts from some of my papers which I am trying to get published. For now I will give a quick overview of my dissertation – and by quick I mean really quick.

The problem I am exploring is the issues organizations have with change, in particular the stress employees feel when change happens – and right now it is happening a lot. My research is analyzing if a trusting environment in an organization can reduce the stress employees experience during change. Current research I’ve uncovered says that trust counters the negative effects of stress, but does not go as far as to say it is due to a reduction in stress. That is what I’m exploring, along with understanding the common mechanisms between trust and stress.

What I like about my topic is that it’s easily understood by non-academics. Most everyone I discuss my work with responds the same way ‘oh yeah, I know exactly what you mean’. That is where the title of this blog comes from: It’s not just academic. I think there is a real opportunity to develop new research which has clear applications in the work space.