Trust Equation

What Would Dale Do? is a newsletter about human behavior.

“The world is full of people who are grabbing and self-seeking. So the rare individual who unselfishly tries to serve others has an enormous advantage.”¹

Helloooo, Insiders! First of all, thanks for being here. To say “I appreciate your support” sounds trite, and is most certainly inadequate. But, you’re here for the Carnegie-isms, so I suppose to thank you is to get to it. Let’s go: 

Jumping off from the previous chapter on self-orientation, this one can be considered the mathematical proof for why the agility to scale back and “zoom out” is an important skill to develop. (Yes, there’s more math incoming.) 

Before I learned about Charles M. Green’s trust equation, the measure for trust seemed both squishy and visceral. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why one person is trustworthy, or what exactly diminishes my faith in someone else. This helped me quantify it: