Coaching practices for The Trust Triangle When Burned Out

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

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

  • Something’s damaged my trust in them but I can’t bring myself to just say so, so instead I quietly pull back, vent to other people, and let it fester
  • I won’t hand anyone real responsibility until they’ve completely proven themselves first
  • Trust with this person has cracked and I just keep apologizing for "not being trustworthy" in this big vague way
  • I do genuinely have their back, but I assume they just know it, so I never actually show it
  • Carrying everyone else’s anxiety and conflict has hollowed me out

Practices that may help

  1. 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.
  2. Have explicit trust conversations when trust is at stake
    Name the trust issue directly rather than managing it indirectly.
    The Trust Triangle
  3. 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
  4. Diagnose which trust dimension is broken before trying to repair
    Name the specific trust assessment that failed — then address that one, not trust in general.
    The Trust Triangle
  5. Demonstrate care through visible acts in the other person’s interest
    Show that your interests and theirs are genuinely aligned — not only when it’s convenient.
    The Trust Triangle
  6. 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.
  7. Build sanctuaries for renewal outside the system
    Maintain relationships and practices outside the organizational system that restore perspective and capacity.
    Adaptive Leadership, Made Practical
  8. 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
  9. 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
  10. Audit and reduce your self-orientation
    Self-orientation is the denominator: a small increase in it wipes out gains in all three numerator variables.
    The Trust Equation, Made Practical

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