Episode 32
The TrustLeader Compass: A Clear Way to Understand Trust in Your Business
Summary
Trust matters in every B2B relationship, but most leaders struggle to define it in a way that actually guides decisions. In this episode, Hannah Eisenberg explains why trust feels so hard to articulate and offers a practical definition built for business environments. She breaks down how vulnerability and perceived risk shape customer decisions and introduces the TrustLeader Compass—a simple tool for diagnosing and improving trust in your key relationships. This conversation gives you a clear, actionable way to build stronger, more dependable partnerships.
What You’ll Learn
- Why trust feels subjective, contextual, and difficult to pin down.
- A practical definition of trust tailored to B2B decision-making.
- How vulnerability and perceived risk determine whether trust forms.
- How trust influences buying decisions more than product or price.
- The four directions of the TrustLeader Compass and how to use them.
How to identify the next step to move any relationship toward unshakable trust.
Transcript
Welcome to another episode of Lead with Trust.
Speaker A:My name is Hannah Eisenberg.
Speaker A:I am the founder of Trust Leader.
Speaker A:And I am on a mission to help businesses build more trust intentionally and systematically by operationalizing trust across their communication, across their culture, across their leadership, so that they can grow their business faster and with less effort because of the things they believe on, not despite of it.
Speaker A:Now, in this episode, I am going to tackle the core of the issue.
Speaker A:What is trust?
Speaker A:A lot of times we throw around the word trust in so many different ways and we mean so many different things.
Speaker A:And I would be really interested to go out in the street and ask a hundred people to define trust.
Speaker A:And I'm pretty sure we would get a lot of different definitions of trust.
Speaker A:So in this episode I really want to become very clear of what does trust mean?
Speaker A:How do we define it, what makes it difficult to define it?
Speaker A:And I am also going to give you a tool that you can use within your organization to see if you are on the right track to building trust that actually makes an impact in your organization.
Speaker A:Are you ready?
Speaker A:Let's dive right in.
Speaker A:Alright.
Speaker A:So what makes trust so hard to define?
Speaker A:If you just take a minute and think about what does trust mean to you?
Speaker A:How would you define trust?
Speaker A:What would you come up with?
Speaker A:The reason why it's so difficult to define and why I would probably define it differently than you would and we would define it different from the next person is because trust is a highly subjective concept.
Speaker A:It is shaped by our personal experience, by our emotions, it is shaped by our upbringing and our social norms that we experience and that we are familiar with.
Speaker A:And it is also shaped by our personal journey.
Speaker A:You might have been burned in the past and that's why you're more distrustful, or the opposite.
Speaker A:You have had so many good experiences that you're more willing to trust other people.
Speaker A:And maybe that's the opposite for me.
Speaker A:So it's highly subjective.
Speaker A:The next thing that makes trust really difficult to define or grasp or measure is it's contextual.
Speaker A:It really depends in that moment in time on the situation that we're in, on the context we're in, in our family, in our social society, in the relationship with the other people we want to trust, or there might be even other components in our surroundings that will make it contextual, how we trust and how we distrust.
Speaker A:The third criteria that makes trust so hard to define is because it's a psychological state that's overlapping with other concepts like faith, confidence, love.
Speaker A:There's different concepts that are somewhat overlapping and they're equally hard to define.
Speaker A:But because of that, it makes it hard to define the single thing so overlapping.
Speaker A:It's also dynamic.
Speaker A:Dynamic means it will shift over time, as I just explained, with it being subjective and contextual.
Speaker A:Over time, something that we've trusted before, we might not trust again because we had a negative experience or because our circumstances change or because the whole situation changed.
Speaker A:My relationship with that person changed.
Speaker A:So it is very dynamic.
Speaker A:And a lot of people say it's very fragile.
Speaker A:I don't agree with that a hundred percent because that whole adage of it takes years to build trust and it can be lost in seconds.
Speaker A:Yes, that's true to some extent.
Speaker A:But if you build trust in a first foundational way, that enables you to have a transaction, right?
Speaker A:But then you deepen that trust and build relation, no trust.
Speaker A:So you really build emotional trust.
Speaker A:That builds relationships over time.
Speaker A:You can't lose trust in seconds unless there's a major breach in trust.
Speaker A:But I disagree with that fragility of trust a little bit if you are building it systematically and intentionally.
Speaker A:All right, so that's four.
Speaker A:Now, number five is that it's relationship driven or it's relational.
Speaker A:It depends on the person I have to trust or I'm extending my trust to basically the relationship that you and I have.
Speaker A:Determine whether you are trusting me or I can trust you.
Speaker A:Now, those are just five of the many, many ways that make it very difficult to define trust.
Speaker A:But I just wanted to point those five out because they are the most relevant in our discussion of how to build trust in business relationships.
Speaker A:So just keep that in mind as we're defining trust.
Speaker A:So now that we know why it's so difficult to define trust, how do actually define trust?
Speaker A:That it's useful, that we can make it intentional and systematic, that we can use it to grow our business in a tangible way.
Speaker A:Trust is often defined as how reliable you are, how dependable you are.
Speaker A:So how do we actually define trust in a way that it's useful?
Speaker A:Well, I just want to quickly read you a couple of definitions that I have in my book.
Speaker A:So the American Psychological association defines trust as the reliance on or the confidence in the dependability of someone or something.
Speaker A:I think that's a commonly used definition and it makes sense.
Speaker A:Merriam Webster dictionary defines trust as the assured reliance on the character, ability, strength or truth of someone or something.
Speaker A:And then last but not least, the Oxford English Dictionary defines trust as the firm belief in the reliability, truth or ability of someone or something.
Speaker A:So all these three definitions are Relatively the same in their scope and in their depth.
Speaker A:However, in business terms, in how we trust from a business to business relationship, for me that doesn't go far enough for me that it almost feels like a one way street.
Speaker A:So in my book Lead with Trust and in the trust leader framework coaching, I lean on the social psychologists and organizational scholars Meyer, Davis and Schorman and their definition of trust.
Speaker A:And I just want to read this out to you real quick.
Speaker A:They define trust as the willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the action of another party based on the expectation that the other party will perform to a particular action important to the truster, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party.
Speaker A:Meaning there is a tension between willingness to be vulnerable and the perceived risk that you have to take.
Speaker A:And that is a definition of trust that really resonates with me.
Speaker A:And I've modified my definition just a tiny bit because it really, for this framework and for the context of this book and how I understand trust, it really fits very well.
Speaker A:So I define trust as the psychological state where our willingness to be vulnerable is equal or greater than the perceived risk of another's actions grounded in the belief that they will fulfill our positive expectation without our direct control or oversight.
Speaker A:So if you think back about the other definitions of all the dictionaries and how trust is generally understood, it relies a lot of times on the intrinsic honesty of that person or their reliability.
Speaker A:But here in these definitions and in the trust leader definition of trust, we really go beyond that, right?
Speaker A:We investigate that tension of how willing are you to trust?
Speaker A:How willing are you to be vulnerable?
Speaker A:Vulnerable in this sense means you're aware that there's a cost of the risk you're taking.
Speaker A:You could be out of money, you could get in trouble if the product doesn't perform as well.
Speaker A:You might have setbacks in the work you're doing because you relied on this product to help you.
Speaker A:There's a cost, but you're willing to take that into account and take the risk of that.
Speaker A:And then there is the perception of the risk.
Speaker A:So if the risk is really, really high, but the perceived cost and our willingness to be vulnerable because of our situation is low, we're probably not going to go that way.
Speaker A:We're probably not going to do it.
Speaker A:So the willingness to be vulnerable is more that internal coming from me.
Speaker A:The perceived risk is the other side.
Speaker A:And our willingness to be vulnerable needs to be higher or, or equal to the perceived risk.
Speaker A:And if that happens, trust happens.
Speaker A:All right, so now that we defined what trust is.
Speaker A:I want to give you a very useful tool that you can use in your organization to make sure you're always moving with your trust building in the right direction.
Speaker A:And it leans on that definition of what we just talked about, what trust is.
Speaker A:And it actually uses those trust criteria, your willingness to be vulnerable and the perception of the risk as sort of an axis.
Speaker A:And it creates what I call a trust compass.
Speaker A:Now let's step through that in detail and you will see how that will always make sure that you're building trust in the best possible way.
Speaker A:Okay, so the trust compass is based on the two axes I just mentioned, the willingness to be vulnerable and the perception of the risk you're taking.
Speaker A:All right, let's look at the trust leader compass in more detail.
Speaker A:So imagine the axes I just talked about, willingness to be vulnerable versus the perception of risk.
Speaker A:They're not Cartesian plane axes, but they're more like an X.
Speaker A:This one is the willingness to be vulnerable.
Speaker A:And the willingness to be vulnerable is high on the top and low on the bottom versus the perceived risk, which is low on the top and high at the bottom.
Speaker A:Now, if you look at the bottom, which is basically the south direction, we have a low willingness to be vulnerable and a high perception of risk.
Speaker A:In this segment, every single interaction feels defensive.
Speaker A:An example of what it would feel like to be in that south section or south quadrant would be if you working with a supplier that has missed key deadlines before, and now you require with every single discussion or every single milestone, you require a legal review because you don't want to get in trouble before because their missed deadlines had major consequences on your business.
Speaker A:So you probably won't keep going forward with them if they're not getting their stuff together.
Speaker A:And that's a bad place to be.
Speaker A:We never want to be in that quadrant ever.
Speaker A:Now, if we're looking at the two side quadrants, we have east and we have west.
Speaker A:The east is the risky trust.
Speaker A:Here we have a high willingness to be vulnerable.
Speaker A:But there's still.
Speaker A:It's coupled with a high perception of risk.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:So in this segment, the person who is trusting is feeling hopeful but a bit uneasy.
Speaker A:And an example of that would be a startup that is choosing a new and unproven vendor because the idea is really compelling, but there's a real risk to it.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:Maybe they're choosing an AI software, an agentic AI software, and there's no real proof use cases yet.
Speaker A:And the risk that they're taking is quite high.
Speaker A:But because they have such a hope of transformational journey that their willingness to be vulnerable is very high here.
Speaker A:There's a lot at stake and the risks are high, but man, it could pay off.
Speaker A:So that's the risky trust.
Speaker A:And sometimes we have to move into that direction.
Speaker A:But generally speaking, we want to stay out of this as much as possible unless we have to be in there in these particular situations.
Speaker A:Now, opposite of that in the west is where the cautious trust lives.
Speaker A:So here we have low willingness to be vulnerable and a low perception of risk.
Speaker A:Now that is a space where functional relationships could happen.
Speaker A:They happen all the time, but they're fragile.
Speaker A:So think of it as more like a one off transaction or a buyer using a standard service provider month to month.
Speaker A:It's reliable, but it's really replaceable.
Speaker A:So while you can live, and a lot of companies actually live in that quadrant, and while you can get fat and happy in this quadrant, you're still living on the edge of constantly being replaced or constantly being, you know, people jumping ship.
Speaker A:Just because the trust is so fragile, you're never going to build long term happy customer relationships where loyalty is key in that area.
Speaker A:Now that brings us to the last quadrant, which is north right now that is where unshakable trust happens.
Speaker A:That's a trust leader phrase that I like to use to describe the trust that happens when someone really deeply trusts you.
Speaker A:The perception of the risk is low, but their willingness to trust you is super high.
Speaker A:This is where deep, effortless relationships and partnerships happen.
Speaker A:This is where customer loyalty and advocacy happens.
Speaker A:This is where you are happy to sign a multi year contract without blinking because you absolutely trust that person.
Speaker A:This is where things happen where if you accidentally screw something up, your customers will come and take your side publicly.
Speaker A:They're willing to stand up and advocate for your cause because they trust you that you're going to do the right thing.
Speaker A:Now that is obviously the part we want to live in the most.
Speaker A:So when we are talking about building trust, we're not just talking about building that fragile trust in the west or we're not talking necessarily about building that uneasy, risky trust in the east.
Speaker A:And we're certainly not talking talking about that distrust section in the South.
Speaker A:What we're talking about is to intentionally and systematically build trust that is getting us to the point of unstoppable trust, unshakable trust right in that north direction.
Speaker A:Let that be our north star in how we build business relationships.
Speaker A:Meaning you have to be vulnerable yourself.
Speaker A:You have to be completely transparent.
Speaker A:You have to be unapologetically aligned with your customers needs and you have that drive of ethically disrupting your industry and we're going to get to that in the coming weeks of what that means.
Speaker A:But if you have that the sky is the limit for what can happen to your business, truly believe that.
Speaker A:I what I would like to leave you with today is have a look at some of your key processes, key policies, even your marketing content and use that trust leader compass and see where that trust leader compass is pointing.
Speaker A:If you have a policy that might require more risk from the buyer than you're willing to give, where does that put you on the compass and how can you correct that into the right direction?
Speaker A:If you have a piece of content on your website that maybe compares you to a competitor, where does that put you on that compass?
Speaker A:Are you maybe bashing the competitor meaning they honestly the perceived risk for the buyer goes up as you bashing a competitor.
Speaker A:Just use that compass to see can you move certain things in the right direction, can you use it to calibrate your business decisions that you always heading towards that North Star towards building unshakable trust.
Speaker A:Alright, I hope this gives you something to start thinking about trust a little bit differently in the way you build business relationships, in the way you approach your marketing, your sales, your culture, your processes within your organization, your communication and I cannot wait until the next episode where we're starting to take apart the trust leader framework and I'm going to give you an overview of how the trust leader framework will help you progress in your trust builder journey.
Speaker A:What the single elements are and how it can help you to build trust intentionally and systematically.
Speaker A:Until next time, don't forget to like and subscribe.
