Trust is a concept with definitional ambiguity but universal familiarity. It is both like love in its mystery and of love in its expression. We often see trust defined as honesty, reliability, integrity, vulnerability and a host of other personal characteristics, but there’s so much more to it than that. 

As renowned therapist and author, Esther Perel once noted: 

“When I went to look at research [on trust], what it fundamentally said is that there is an absolute definitional void. It is one of those concepts that is swimming in vagueness. There is a view that reinforces the notion that trust is a psychological state in which you express the willingness to be vulnerable. Then there is a view that looks at trust as process rather than state.  But in the end, there is no agreement. The most complex psychological experiences are actually very hard to define.” 

The mystery of trust is one that captivated me at a young age and was cemented as I navigated professional spaces. What drives people to be (un)trustworthy? What is the role of race and power in trust building and repair? As I dug deeper, I discovered that the majority of the most cited “experts” on trust are white men and that critical dimensions of our identities and our contexts are missing from the discourse on trust. 

Thinkers such as Robert Putnam, Stephen Covey, Tony Bryk, James Coleman, and David Halpern have contributed significantly to the discourse on trust and supported the evidence base in valuable ways. And at the same time, I do not see myself or my experiences reflected in their conversations about trust. 

Trust is so much more than a set of characteristics and can mean different things to different people in different contexts. Knowing cultural differences, understanding power dynamics, and taking context into account are critical aspects of trust building that are undervalued in the current discourse. 

Our limited ways of understanding trust’s cultural and contextual nuance is holding us back from accessing connection and collective liberation. The world we are creating requires us to understand the depth and breadth of the remarkable glue that holds people, organizations, and societies together. In order to live in a liberated world where people are cared for, economies are rooted in solidarity, everyone gets what they need and experiences belonging- we must evolve how we practice trust. I cannot imagine a liberated world without deepening our understanding of how trust operates across cultures, identities, values, and power dynamics. I’ve spent the last fifteen years studying, observing, experimenting, and being in dialogue about the ways in which trust is culturally and contextually rooted in an effort to help us evolve our understanding of trust on our collective journey toward liberation. 

On this journey, I learned about Dr. Shayla Nunnaly’s work on racialized trust and the ways in which Black and White Americans experience trust differently because of systemic racism. I learned about the land back movement and reparations as efforts toward healing broken trust with Indigenous and Black communities. I talked to countless people working toward social, economic, environmental, and disability justice who described the many ways trust has been broken with nature and each other over centuries - framing the work to rebuild relationships is paramount to our collective survival. 

What emerged from these conversations and curiosities was a framework called the Trust Compass. The Trust Compass is designed to help us better understand the dynamics that impact our relationships and how we repair them. The Trust Compass will not do the work for you but it will help break down the dimensions of trust that extend beyond personal characteristics. You have integrity but what are the power dynamics impacting your interactions with others? You are honest but what does honesty require when you are navigating race and racism, especially for white people and/or people with privilege?

The four dimensions of the Trust Compass include:

• Identities: How does who we are shape how we build and repair trust?

• Contexts: What are the histories, politics, and geographies that shape our relationships and need for repair?

• Values: How do our values align and conflict and what does that mean for our relationships?

• Positionalities: What are the ways in which power and privilege impact who and how we trust?

Looking at trust through the lens of who we are and what we experience allows us build and repair relationships with an understanding each other’s definitions of trust, rather than the assumption that we all define trust the same way. If we are to tip the scales toward justice, we must better understand how trust operates and update the language that we use to talk about trust and healing. This will require risk, courage and vulnerability. It will require us to step into our truths, listen deeply to others' truths, and act accordingly. The Trust Compass is a navigational tool to guide us through our relationships with ourselves, our organizations, and the systems we are rebuilding to create a more just and liberated world.

The Trust Compass is a tool that I have used in my work for over a decade to ask questions, get curious, and problem solve with clients and friends who are navigating relationships and repair. I am excited to share it with the CTT family and the world.