In my continued quest to break down concepts into digestibles, I have considered the noun and verb called “trust” and found it profound. At the same time, I felt that it needed to be understood in the context of corporate governance practice.

By definition, one of the many dictionary meanings of the word is:

“a confident expectation”

What does it mean to deposit trust in someone or something?

What does it entail?

What are the roles of the depositor and recipient of trust?

After some thought, I decided to initialize it into words for each letter and channel my energy to illustration of each of them.

1. TOTAL
To the extent of the task at hand, the depositor of trust must totally believe that the recipient of their trust will deliver on it.

2. RELIANCE
The depositor of trust will rely on the judgement of the recipient in executing on the task to the extent necessary to so execute. One example that comes to mind is the task not to disclose information entrusted to you as secret or confidential, outside the permitted boundaries.

3. UNDERSTANDING
It is critical that the parties to a trust pact have a common understanding of the subject of the trust and are clear as to their respective roles. For example, if you trust that your child will bring a ceramic plate to you without breaking it, do not behave as though you have just commenced your lesson of how to balance the plate. Allow the child to execute the task without gasping at every step they take! The child’s duty is to bring you a whole plate as opposed to pieces of it.

4. SYMBIOTIC
Trust is a two way street, otherwise it is dysfunctional. The depositor has a duty to the recipient to be truthful and candid with the deposit and the recipient must be competent to execute. Lawyers for instance, get paid for keeping client confidence and the clients get the benefit of being able to fully express themselves for better execution of their instructions without the fear of their life stories being pasted on public fora.

5. TENACITY
I take the view that to be able to foster trust, one must be tenacious about it. There must be a conscious effort to self evaluate and monitor your conduct against the covenants of the trust. The requirement for one to be principled and resolute about their duties and responsibilities in the trust relationship cannot be over emphasized.

I hope I have evoked some thought on this matter and would like to hear other initials for this all important principle.