Quotes About Trust

I have great faith in fools - self-confidence my friends will call it.

Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,And tempted her out of her gloom.

There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.

For all prayer is answered. Don't tell God how to answer it. Make thy wants known to Him. Live as if ye expected them to be answered. For He has given, "What ye ask in my name, believing, that will my Father in heaven give to thee.

When we get to know someone personally and can work with him or her on a more personal level, this is Level Two, which is essential for real help to occur. Level Two trust implies that we are willing to make promises and will keep them. Level Two openness implies that with respect to our joint task we will share all relevant information and will not lie to one another.

In our view, leadership is always a relationship, and truly successful leadership thrives in a group culture of high openness and high trust. Leadership and culture can be seen as two sides of the same coin, and culture is quintessentially a group phenomenon. Though this book focuses on a new model of leadership, it is equally a book about culture and group dynamics.

The collective learning for us in the teaching seminar was that the higher-status person has to create the environment in which personalization becomes safe, and, in a sense, give permission for more open, trusting communication by first revealing something about himself.

Ultimately the purpose of Humble Inquiry is to build relationships that lead to trust which, in turn, leads to better communication and collaboration.

Trust in the context of a conversation is believing that the other person will acknowledge me, not take advantage of me, not embarrass or humiliate me, tell me the truth, and, in the broader context, not cheat me, work on my behalf, and support the goals we have agreed to.

How Does Asking Build Relationships?

The paradox is that the main inhibitor of useful telling is often our own failure to inquire in a way that makes it safe for others to tell us the truth, or at least to share all of what they know.

building relationships between humans is an intricate adaptive process because it requires us to deal simultaneously with our biologically encoded impulses to both compete and cooperate in a cultural context that tends to favor one over the other. In our U.S. culture, it can be especially difficult to build enough trust to feel comfortable asking for help.

But especially if you are dependent on others—if you are the boss or senior person trying to increase the likelihood that your subordinates will help you and be open with you—then Humble Inquiry will not only be desirable but essential. Why is this so difficult? We need next to look at the cultural forces that favor telling.

How does one produce a climate in which people will speak up, bring up information that is safety related, and even correct superiors or those of higher status when they are about to make a mistake?

The goal of relationship building should be to reduce each other's blind spots by each revealing more of our concealed selves.

Humble Inquiry is therefore most relevant when you find yourself in a conversation that is initially just transactional but develops into something more personal because one or both of you want it.

Everything You Say or Do Is an Intervention that Determines the Future of the Relationship

A lie has speed, but truth has endurance.

I love you, and because I love you I believe in you. But if I did not believe, still should I love. Had you come back for me, and had there been no other way, I would have gone into the jungle with you - forever.

I got this story from someone who had no business in the telling of it.

What people say behind your back is your standing in the community.

Half the promises people say were never kept, were never made.

There is nothing so well known as that we should not expect something for nothing—but we all do and call it Hope.

Americans detest all lies except lies spoken in public or printed lies.