Games and Guardians 143Leaders are realists, with trust as with anything else. They
do not exude a fuzzy goodwill to all and sundry, paying no
attention to experience or the evidence for their senses. To
trust people indiscriminately would be naïve (and danger-
ous), and some people you can trust in one situation but not
in another. In everyday life, we may trust someone with money
but not with our spouse (or vice versa). We also judge people
by what they do and what they value, before deciding to trust
them in a particular situation. But how much information do
you need? When do you decide enough is enough?
Do you apply Roman law or common law to trust?
Whichever one you use will affect your relationships pro-
foundly.
Common law starts with the presupposition that people
are trustworthy, unless proved otherwise. People who
apply common law will gather information and then, finding
nothing to indicate a person is untrustworthy, will trust
them. Roman law starts with the assumption that people are
untrustworthy unless proved trustworthy. People applying
Roman law gather information because they need to get
evidence that someone is trustworthy before going ahead.
This is not just a fine distinction, but a whole way of being. It
will colour how you see the world and how you deal with peo-
ple. Living with others means we have to have some level of
trust or life would be impossible.
Leaders have to be trustworthy, because leadership means
dealing with uncertainty. You have to deal with your own
doubts and uncertainty, and you have to convince others.
People will generally stay with what they know unless you can
convince them of something better, and to convince them,
you have to get them to trust you. At first a leader has to sup-
port others in their uncertainty. They need to feel your
strength in order to decide that you are trustworthy. Later
everyone supports each other.
There is no technique for trust, it goes beyond NLP tech-
nique. NLP uses the term ‘rapport’ for a relationship of
trust and influence, but although this is a good first step,
rapport is limited to place and time. I think that when you