Chapter oneMake It PersonalRule #1Trust is won and lost person-to-person. Always think of trust in these personal terms, no matter what scale you’re working at.I want to begin by asking a simple question: How exactly do we decide to trust? Or to withhold trust? We’ve all made these decisions countless times. But for most of us, most of the time, they aren’t conscious, calculated decisions. They mostly just feel right. So we may go our whole lives without ever really thinking about how we decide to trust others, or not to.
Let’s do that now.
We’ve already seen an example of people making a decision about whether to trust others. It came in the introduction, when I talked about the birth of my daughter, Kira. And I assure you, that decision was not easy. Kira’s mother and I knew her life was in danger due to something called “meconium aspiration syndrome.” We knew that the traditional treatment was only to support the baby and hope for the best. And we knew that a local doctor in San Diego had invented a new treatment in which the baby’s blood was routed through a machine and oxygenated while a special protein fluid was used to flush out the baby’s tiny lungs. But beyond that? We knew almost nothing.
Most importantly, we didn’t know how likely it was that the treatment would work. Or what its risks were. No one did. The treatment option had not been validated by rigorous scientific testing. The doctor who had invented the treatment was in the midst of running a double-blind experiment, which meant that, to be precise, Kira wasn’t offered the treatment. She was offered the chance to be a test subject in the experiment. If we agreed, a random selection would determine whether Kira got the new treatment or the traditional treatment.
The doctor who invented this new treatment was named Graham Bernstein. We met and spoke. We had never met this man before, or even heard of him. Now we were being asked to almost literally place our baby daughter in his hands. For an experiment.
We said yes. The random selection assigned Kira the treatment. And the treatment worked.
But why did we say yes? How did we decide to trust Dr. Bernstein?
The triangle of trust: authenticity, empathy, logic
Trust is critical to everything we do. Academics hailing from various fields—sociology, psychology, economics, business—have spent their careers studying it, developing different theories and models for how it works.
One framework in particular for thinking about trust decisions really resonates with me and with my experience. And I find it useful and insightful. It’s also simple. Incredibly simple. Here it is:
This version of the framework comes from the work of Frances Frei, a professor at the Harvard Business School. “Every single time trust exists, these three things are there,” Frei told me when we spoke in 2024. “And every single time it’s broken, I can trace it back to one of these three.”
Academics being academics, there is debate about which labels are best to assign to the three points of the triangle. But, quibbles of wording aside, there is wide agreement on the basics of the framework. And what makes it work.
What Frei calls “authenticity” could also be called honesty, integrity, or character. When people judge your authenticity, they’re looking at three things: What do you think? What do you say? How do you act? “When those three things are in line,” Frei says, “you experience me as authentic.” If I think you are authentic, and you promise to do something, I trust you will do your best to keep your promise. Because that’s what authentic people do.
If “authenticity” is about you, “empathy” is about how you feel about others. Do you care about them? Do you want them to succeed and thrive? Do you really listen to them? If the answer is yes, you are even more trustworthy. Empathy could also be called “benevolence” or “caring.”
The third element, “logic,” is your ability to deliver. It’s one thing to be honest and caring, but delivering on your promises requires more than good intentions. You need whatever it takes—plans, skills, training, experience, whatever—for you to get the job done. “Logic” could also be called “competence” or “capability.”
Simple, right? And yet, this framework can be simplified even further by boiling down all three elements of the framework to one word.
“All three are about reliability,” Kent Grayson told me. Grayson is a professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and cofounder of the “The Trust Project,” a center for research on trust. His point is critical because it goes right to the heart of what trust is.
What is trust?
In October 1962, the government of the United States announced that it had photographs taken by spy planes that proved the Soviet Union had installed missiles armed with nuclear warheads in Cuba. A third world war loomed. American officials fanned out around the globe to rally America’s friends and allies, with one of the toughest jobs falling to former Secretary of State Dean Acheson. He flew to France.
America’s postwar relationship with France had been rocky, in part thanks to the personality of the French president. Charles de Gaulle had fought in the killing fields of the First World War and led Free French forces in the Second World War. He was notoriously proud and prickly. And demanding.
Acheson hustled into de Gaulle’s office followed by an aide carrying maps and documents. But before Acheson could begin his presentation, de Gaulle spoke.
“I understand you have not come to consult me but to inform me,” de Gaulle said.
That is true, Acheson responded. The White House had already made key decisions. There was no turning back. He reached for his files and prepared to make America’s case for the French president.
De Gaulle wasn’t having it. “Put your documents away,” he abruptly ordered. “The word of the President of the United States is good enough for me.”
De Gaulle went on to promise Acheson that France would stand with the United States, and he was as good as his word. De Gaulle later lobbied other European leaders to support the White House.
I don’t know about you but I got a little emotional when I read “the word of the President of the United States is good enough for me.” And my reaction is telling. Trust is very often a lot more than a cold-blooded calculation. If you have ever had someone look you in the eyes and say, “I trust you,” you know the emotional gravity of those words. They are heavy. Their opposite—“I don’t trust you”—can be even heavier.
The feelings that trust conjures are so strong it can seem wrong to talk about trust merely in practical terms. It seems to call for loftier language, even something a little spiritual. Maybe there’s some value in doing it that way in some contexts. I don’t know. But mostly? I don’t think that’s helpful.
Trust really is practical.
We don’t trust people in the abstract. We trust people to do something. (Or not do something, as the case may be.) When your car breaks down, you leave it with a mechanic you trust, meaning a mechanic you are confident will make the car run again and bill you honestly and fairly. When you say you trust a colleague’s judgment, you mean you think your colleague can and will choose the best way to achieve a goal. And when you share a secret with someone who promises not to repeat it, and you declare your trust in that person, you mean you are sure she won’t blab.
Yes, sometimes you may say about someone very close to you that you trust her absolutely, in all things, no matter what. But do you really? Sure, you may love her. You may trust her with the keys to your house, the care of your kids, the guarding of your secrets. But would you trust her to fix that broken car? No, you wouldn’t. Unless she happens to be a qualified mechanic. Because trust really is practical.
And that is why that trust framework is all about reliability, as Kent Grayson said.
Are you going to do what I need you to do? Can I rely on you? If I give you a big green checkmark on all three elements of the framework—I think you are conscientious, you care about others, and you can deliver—the answer is “Yes, I can rely on you.” And when I rely on you, I trust you. It’s that simple.
It’s also no mystery why trust is so emotional. Cooperation has been essential for the survival of our species for as long as we have been a species—more on that later—and trust enables cooperation. But we can get burned if we put our trust in the wrong person, so people have been judging the trustworthiness of others for all of human history. Those who judged well benefited; those who didn’t paid a price.
Copyright © 2025 by Jimmy Wales. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
