Deciding if someone is trustworthy: Capability

- So one of the most important questions when it comes to trust is how do we decide whom to give our trust to? How do we decide whether someone is trustworthy? Well, the amazing thing is there is a science behind why we give our trust to people, what makes someone trustworthy. And it comes down to four traits. The easiest way to think about these traits is to think of them as the capability traits, which are all about how someone does something, and the character traits, which are all about why we do certain things. Let's tackle the capability traits. The capability traits are made up of competence and reliability. Competence, we should always be asking does this person have the skills, the time, the resources and the knowledge to do what they say they're going to do? On the flip side, we should ask ourself this question as well. There's two things we have to remember to get the capability trait right. The first is that we often mistake confidence for competence. We've all been in those interviews where the person sitting in front of us is so confident around the capabilities. That doesn't mean that they really have the capability. The second thing is to go back to what we talked about at the beginning, which is this idea that it's highly contextual and situational, so you might be capable to drive a car or to teach a class, but that doesn't mean that I want to hire you as a lawyer or I trust you as a doctor. So this is the trait of capability. The second trait is reliability, and reliability is a really fascinating trait because if you ask people are they reliable, the general answer is yes. We like to feel that people can depend on us. Reliability comes down to our relationship with time. Are we respectful of time? Are we on time? Also relates to the consistency of our behaviors over time. Now I personally know that trust wobbles for me when someone behaves in one way on a Monday and then is a completely different person on a Friday, or you have the most amazing meeting with a financial planner, and they set these really high expectations, and then you don't hear anything from them. Inconsistency of behaviors can be a sign that someone is trustworthy. It can often erode our trust in another person. So the competence and reliability is the capability side of the equation, how someone does something. And the flip side of that is the why someone does something.