I would like to start by saying I’m sorry for the clickbait title. ‘This is how it’s done’ was manipulative; I hinted at information and then formed a vacuum.

I won’t do it again. It was a stupid thing to do. I’m sorry. Please accept my apologies.

I still hope you find this article useful, because there is much to be said about trust.

Trust means we’ll stop questioning each other’s motives, and just get along better..

Ok so let’s cut to the chase. I’ve discovered a neat little trick to gain people’s trust within days of a first encounter, and here it is:

“make a mistake fast, and admit to it even faster.”

And I’m not talking about an inexcusable blunder–but just enough to say sorry.

In an organisation, or any relationship, you are being evaluated at all times, and what people really want to know about you is:

do you have personal integrity? or are you full of horse dung.

Basically: can we trust you. Seriously? Which one are you?

Saying “I messed up” is a unique personality trait, possessed by those with personal integrity. People will know early on that when you mess up, you admit to it, and don’t try to cover up your tracks like the mentally challenged psychopath you may or may not be.

They lack that information, and need it vitally to build a relationship. So give it to them early, and let it subtly set the tone for the relationship.

There are two types of people in this world.

Low personal integrity:

Tends to lie often.

Tends to deceive often.

Tends to cover up their mistakes.

Tends to blame others for their own shortcomings.

High personal integrity:

Tends to say sorry often and fast.

Tends to learn from their mistakes and move on.

Which one are you? The people around you desperately want to know.

Why it works best early on–the halo effect.

I once went on a group holiday with a friend. On the first day, as we were queueing at the buffet, he knocked over the box of cutlery. It made a loud crashing sound. The room fell quiet and everyone turned their heads in our direction. My friend put his hand up, bowed, and said “I’m OK don’t worry” which got quite a few laughs.

For the rest of the holiday people kept coming up to us saying “hey you’re the guys who dropped the cutlery”. It was the only conversation opener they had, because it was the only thing they knew about us. It turned out to be the best ice breaker, and I still, to this day, have not had so many people come and introduce themselves to me in such a genuinely friendly manner. We’d made asses of ourselves, but we played it well.

Back to trust: at the start of an interaction, people subconsciously take whatever little information they know about us, and use it to make hundreds of assumptions. This is a cognitive bias called the halo effect.

People desperately want to fit each other in neat little boxes; give them that box, with a trust label on it. The halo effect means they’ll extrapolate this trust into many other areas of your personality too. They’ll assume you’re likely to be an overall good person, and will even be willing to discard information that does not conform to this pattern.

Make it a habit.

This is not a social engineering ploy to gain people’s trust and then deceive. It’s a way to set the tone for an interaction, and then follow through.

Taking responsibility for your actions is one of the most important habits you’ll ever develop, because it reaffirms that you are in control of your own life.

People who blame the traffic for being late are subtly conveying they’re not in control of their lives. They were not late because of the traffic, they were late because they didn’t give themselves enough time.

Taking responsibility for our actions puts us in the driver’s seat. It puts us on the lookout for life’s unpredictabilities, and when the milk turns sour we continue insisting it was our fault, and looking for the lesson in disguise.

So make mistakes, make them soon, and take responsibility for them; you’ll subtly communicate you’re an adult with personal integrity, and can be trusted in the long term.