Why bother reading this?

Most people, if asked to name the three most essential communication skills, would list at least one, if not all, of these attributes: trust, empathy, and active listening. Yet, if we asked the same group how strong they thought their own abilities were in these areas, I would bet that, like me, most would overestimate their skill levels. Why is that?

One reason is that we tend to classify our communication abilities in a binary way-either “good” or “bad” And typically, we self-assess on the” good” side. However, this simplistic evaluation often prevents us from a deeper introspection, leaving our skills vulnerable when we face more consequential conversations that truly test our abilities. When these moments arise, successfully combining trust, empathy, and active listening is critical.

Even if you consider yourself adept at these skills, this piece can still serve as a useful reference, especially if you are training, coaching, or mentoring others.

Trust

When considering the three essential building blocks for effective communication, trust likely stands out as the most important. The other two supporting pillars are empathy and active listening. All three ideally work in unison together.

Trust is the foundation, the bedrock upon which all other communication is built.

Looking back on my own experiences, for over 20 years, I was extremely fortunate to have worked with bosses who I completely trusted and respected. That trust was mutual and formed the basis of strong professional relationships, both at work and socially, linked to positive results for the respective companies I worked for. However, I'd also experienced situations, like many of you, where trust was weak or broken completely. In those cases, I sometimes soldiered on, but not surprisingly never felt comfortable and never performed at my best. As many of you will have experienced, people will often leave a company, saying they moved because it was for “a better position”, rather than tell the truth, that they had lost faith and trust with someone or with the company.

Let’s now look at the theory under-pinning trust. Its not earth shatteringly difficult to understand. Consistent execution is the hard part – as we shall see as we analyse the “trust equation”.

Theory Behind Trust

Trust by Numbers – Rate Your Own Trust Score

A simple formula from The Trusted Advisor - by David H. Maister

The formula below, offers a practical way to measure how our communication builds or destroys trust:

Trust = (Reliability + Credibility + Intimacy)
                           Self-Orientation

How do you score yourself? Rate each variable from 1 to 10 (1 being very weak and 10 as strong as it gets). Here’s what each term means:

Reliability: Doing what you say you will do. If unable to meet a commitment, you inform others in well in advance or renegotiate.

Theoretically you should be able to score a 10 on this attribute every time, even if you are new in a job. Sadly, either through disorganization, not knowing how, or a failure to commit, there is normally a lot of unnecessary slippage in this attribute.

Credibility: Here your knowledge, expertise, and experience in your field will determine your own credibility. These same attributes also apply to a company’s expertise.

Intimacy: Creating a safe space where partners feel comfortable sharing thoughts and feelings without fear of judgment. We build intimacy by showing vulnerability and openness.

See the subtle differences between empathy and intimacy further into this paper

Self-Orientation: All the good work we might do in the top line of our formula, can be negatively impacted if we are overly self oriented.

What does self-orientation look like? Self orientation refers to our focus and how much we align to the interests of others. Highly self orientated people are hard to trust as they're more interested in themselves then those they're working with. If people think we are more interested in our own goals than on their goals, then they are less likely to trust us not to seek personal gain at their expense.

In a work context its possible to address self orientation through various aspects of personal development and through learning to understand that helping others is generally quite highly correlated with personal happiness, well-being and productivity.

Identifying Self-Orientation in Ourselves and Others

Let's face it, we are all to some degree self-centred. In our early years we are highly “dependent” on others We then move into our “independent” phase, before hopefully, we finally recognize that we operate best collaborating “inter- dependently”. If we achieve this, we have a good chance to deliver on the promise that “nobody is perfect- but a team can be”!

What does self-orientation look like?

These traits are indicative of someone who is self-oriented:

1. They dominate conversations
2. Lack empathy
3. Take more than they give
4. Want things done their way
5. Are quick to blame others
6. Want to be the center of attention
7. Take credit for successes instead of recognizing others

Trust and Feedback

“Kind people will tell you things a nice person will not. A kind person will tell you that you have spinach on your teeth; a nice person will not because it is uncomfortable.”

-- Shane Parrish

Time and Trust

“We don’t trust each other, because we don’t take the time to get to know each other.”

-- Barack Obama, 2024 Democratic Convention

Empathy

First let's see how empathy and intimacy are different. Both empathy and intimacy build trust and in some ways they're similar. Here are some of the ways they're different:

Empathy as understanding the other’s feelings:

Empathy is about actively putting oneself in another’s shoes, listening deeply, and showing understanding. It focuses more on the feelings of the other person and responding in a way that makes the other person feel seen and heard.

Intimacy as sharing of self:

Intimacy, by contrast to empathy, involves revealing more of one's own inner thoughts and feelings. While empathy is an outward effort to connect by understanding someone else’s experience, intimacy deepens trust by inviting the other person into our own inner world.

Degree of personal disclosure:

Empathy doesn't require the same level of self disclosure as intimacy. One can empathize deeply without sharing personal information, but intimacy often includes soft disclosure to build trust. In practice empathy often serves as a foundation for intimacy. Empathizing with someone can lead to moments where both people feel safe enough to share more about themselves, thereby creating intimacy.

How empathy works

To be empathetic is to foster intimacy creating a safe space for partners/friends/and colleagues to express their innermost thoughts and feelings without fear of judgment. Being empathetic means genuinely understanding and feeling what someone else is experiencing, seeing the world through their eyes, and responding with care and understanding. It is not just about hearing words but connecting with the emotions behind them, like sadness, joy or frustration and responding in a way that shows understanding. Empathy can involve active listening, asking thoughtful questions and acknowledging feelings without judgment

Why empathy matters:

Empathy is fundamental to meaningful relationships and effective communication. When we are empathetic, we build trust and connection, encouraging others to feel safe and open with us. This is especially important in personal relationships at work and in social settings. For example, in a work environment, empathy can help address conflicts, enhance collaboration, and improve team morale, leading to a more cohesive and productive team. In broader social interactions, empathy encourages tolerance and understanding across different perspectives.

Are we born or made empathetic?

Research suggests empathy has both innate and learned components. While certain parts of our brain are predisposed to recognize and respond to the emotions of others, life experiences, upbringing and conscious practice shape how we use empathy. For example, individuals raised in a nurturing environment often show higher empathy levels, as they experienced and observed compassionate behavior. Empathy can be developed at any age by actively practicing perspective-taking and developing emotional intelligence

How can we become more empathetic?

Slow down and be available to hear the other person. This is reflected in the sage advice of Stephen Covey who said, “it’s true that becoming an empathetic listener takes time, but it doesn't take anywhere near as much time as it takes to back up and correct misunderstandings when you are already miles down the road, to redo, and to live with unexpressed and unsolved problems”.

Another piece of useful advice to help empathy is to “match” your communication style to “mirror” the other person. People like and trust others the more similar they are to each others preferred communication style. You can do this by selecting the words you use, the speed you communicate at, the information you share with the other person - more facts and less feelings and vice versa, “all in sync” with the other person's preferred communication style, are all helpful ways in building empathy. A simple practical example serves to illustrate. If someone is visibly stressed, using a calm, slower tone can help them feel understood.

Avoid being “judgmental” about others

Being on guard against the unnecessary judgment of others, is a critically important attribute for building both trust and empathy. My social work training emphasized that acceptance of others, with all their flaws, is a prerequisite for helping them. This does not mean condoning negative behaviors but understanding and accepting the humanity in everyone.

“You cannot just forget all these wonderful and good things that a person has done, because one thing did not come off the way you thought it should come off”

-- Aretha Franklin

Be more Curious!

One of the best ways to avoid being self-oriented, is to become more genuinely curious, about the person you are communicating with. Where do they come from, what makes them tick, do they have family etc. The answer to one question usually provides a path for more curious questions.

Understand your “saboteurs” and use your “sage” powers to become more empathetic

Shirzad Chamine’s work in his book “Positive Intelligence”, provides a comprehensive system to control our “Saboteurs” and build on our 5x “Sages”, the most important one not surprisingly being empathy.

Ironically its our strengths which if overused become our “saboteurs”.

Let me illustrate. One of our possible 9 x “saboteurs” identified in the survey below, which you can complete is one called “stickler”. On the positive side’, if one has a very high score on this attribute, [ in the 8 to 10 range] you are likely to be a perfectionist. While that is a positive attribute, paradoxically if over-used it could mean, that you are never satisfied in your restless pursuit for perfectionism in everything. That might be the search for a “perfect partner”, the “perfect solution to a problem”, “the creation of “the perfect meal for your guests” or “perfection in whatever project you might be working on”. This can mean you are never satisfied and become unnecessarily anxious, when you don’t meet your own impossibly high standards and expectations of others.

Living with someone who scores high on the “stickler “attribute, I can at times feel irritated by their “sticker perfectionism”. This is particularly true when I feel its being indirectly critical of me. This can lead me to make unkind critical comments about my partners “ridiculous perfectionism”.

So where does empathy come into this situation? Simply by consciously having more empathy for my wife’s high scoring “saboteur” attribute has helped enormously. I have trained myself to recognize the stress it must cause her and have a greater appreciation of the positive side of this attribute. These empathetic behaviours have helped me enormously in the control of my irritation

Use the link below to complete your personal survey and generate a report that will help you interpret your “Saboteur” scores. From here, you can start learning to use your 5 “Sage” powers, the most important one being empathy.

https:www.positiveintelligence.com/saboteurs

Active Listening

Active listening is the third pillar in becoming an effective communicator. It involves not just hearing but fully engaging and respecting what the other person is saying.

The following is a guide on how to become a better active listener.

Be Fully Present and Ensure Understanding

Avoid interruptions, focus intently on the speaker without distractions. Shut-up and listen! If you are an extrovert like me this can sometimes be hard to do!!

“Silence is not the absence of something, but the presence of everything”

• Gordon Hempton - acoustic ecologist

Enhance Clarity and Understanding

Use the following methods to ensure maximum clarity:

• Paraphrasing
• Summarizing
• Testing understanding

“When you say your are not satisfied, I get the sense it could be mostly because of “x”, I could be wrong, it might be something else altogether that I haven’t noticed …what do think ?”

Building on what the Other Person has Said

This is a particularly positive attribute that we don’t see often use enough, particularly in a team setting. We are more likely to promote our own ideas rather than building on someone else’s idea.

“I love that idea and if we did Y, it could be even more effective in our search for a true differentiator …”

Reversing

Answering a question with a question, you get the other party to reframe the question, to make sure you understand what the other person is asking before you reply.

“Help me understand what you mean, when you ask, “what makes us different from our competition”. I would say we are good a lot of things, but more importantly, what’s most important to you?”

Nonverbal Cues to signal understanding

Like nodding, maintaining eye contact and showing appropriate facial expressions. These signals convey interest and empathy, reinforcing the speaker’s sense of being heard and understood.

Apply Mehrabian’s 7-38-55 Communication Rule

This communication model posits that in conveying emotions, only 7% of meaning is derived from words, 38% from tone of voice, and 55% from body language, applies specifically to communications with an emotional or attitudinal component. This model is not intended for all forms of communication, but it is specifically useful in understanding mixed or ambiguous messages where nonverbal cues play a critical role in interpreting feelings or attitude.

For example, if someone says, “I’m fine” but their tone and body language suggest otherwise, Mehrabian’s model highlights that the listener is likely to interpret the speaker’s emotional state, based more on those non-verbal cues than on the actual words. For straightforward factual communication where emotions are not involved, the weight given to tone and body language would not follow this ratio.

Concluding Thoughts

Congratulations if you got this far and managed to get all the way through this paper!

Trust, empathy, and active listening all work in unison. Its hard to be good at one and not so good at the other, without negatively impacting our overall communication effectiveness.

None of us can ever be perfect at these 3 foundational communication skills all the time. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. The idea, therefore, should be to self-reflect, pick one important thing we want to work on and start the process of tracking our success and making it a brand-new successful communication habit.

Where Do We Go to From Here?

The third paper in this communication project, will be shorter, less theoretical and will focus on a number of “small ideas” that compliment and build on the Big 3 covered in this paper.