The Four Factors of Trust

CHAPTER 1The Four Factors That Drive Trust

In this chapter:

• The Four Factors of Trust
• The HX TrustID is born

David Kirby is an Associate Director of Strategy and Business at Ford Motor Company's Enterprise Connectivity group. He has devoted many years of his career to the topic of trust. David routinely kicks off workshops with an exercise that goes like this. First, he asks participants to write down their definition of trust. He doesn't give any further instruction, just a Post‐it Note and two minutes to write. Then he has each person read their definition out loud. Someone might say, “Trust is making yourself vulnerable.” Someone else might note, “Trust is currency.” Or “I know it when I feel it.” If there are ten respondents, David typically receives ten different definitions. He gets a few chuckles and knowing‐but‐uncomfortable glances as each person realizes that, as a team, they don't have a common definition for something as fundamental as trust. Then David hands them a new Post‐it Note and asks them to write down their definition of reliability, which is one of the Four Factors of Trust. Same drill, two minutes. This time person after person says the same thing: “Doing what you say you are going to do.” People struggle to define trust, but they are really good at defining the core components of trust, like reliability.

As our team set out to build a new, better way to measure trust—one that leaders like ourselves could act on—we knew we needed to understand ...