Coaching practices for The Trust Equation Before Bed

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For The Trust Equation Before Bed, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

  • I keep everything at work behind a polished, guarded front
  • With new people I try to fast-forward to being close
  • I won’t hand anyone real responsibility until they’ve completely proven themselves first
  • I say "I’ll send that over" or "I’ll get to it" and then a bunch of those little things quietly slip my mind
  • Every night before bed looks completely different depending on my mood

Practices that may help

  1. The Trust Equation, Made Practical
    The Trust Equation (Maister, Green, and Galford) holds that trustworthiness = (credibility + reliability + intimacy) ÷ self-orientation. The model is a practitioner framework rather than a rigorously tested theory, but it usefully names the levers — especially self-orientation, which is the single biggest trust-killer most leaders overlook.
  2. Lower your guard to raise the intimacy score
    Sharing something real about yourself makes others feel safer sharing something real with you.
    The Trust Equation, Made Practical
  3. Earn the right to deepen the relationship in stages
    Trust compounds over time — start with technical credibility and expand into intimacy as it is earned.
    The Trust Equation, Made Practical
  4. Extend trust deliberately to invite it
    Trust others first, in bounded ways, before they have earned every dimension — it is how trust is built.
    The Trust Triangle
  5. Build reliability through small, visible commitments
    Reliability is built not by big promises but by flawlessly keeping small, everyday ones.
    The Trust Equation, Made Practical
  6. The Trust Triangle
    Charles Feltman’s Trust Triangle (from The Thin Book of Trust) identifies four distinct assessments that together constitute trust: sincerity (I mean what I say), reliability (I do what I say), competence (I have the ability to do what I say), and care (I have your interests at heart). Trust breaks down when any one of these assessments fails — and repairing trust requires identifying which assessment was damaged.
  7. Anchor the wind-down with a consistent starting cue
    A repeated pre-sleep ritual — a specific tea, a book, a certain playlist — becomes a conditioned cue that induces sleepiness over time.
    The Wind-Down Routine: Engineering Your Path to Sleep
  8. Build sincerity by saying only what you mean
    Only make commitments and assertions you actually believe — and retract the ones you don’t.
    The Trust Triangle
  9. The Pre-Sleep Worry Buffer
    Use a 10-minute afternoon or early evening worry review to protect sleep from nighttime rumination.
    Worry Time: Containing Anxiety With Scheduled Worry
  10. Build reliability by making smaller, keepable promises
    Under-promise consistently, then exceed rather than over-promise and fall short.
    The Trust Triangle

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