Coaching practices for The Trust Triangle When Overwhelmed

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

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

• I won’t hand anyone real responsibility until they’ve completely proven themselves first
• 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
• When I’m overwhelmed I just clamp down and handle it by myself in silence, even with my partner right there
• I keep everything at work behind a polished, guarded front
• I do genuinely have their back, but I assume they just know it, so I never actually show it

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. 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
3. Have explicit trust conversations when trust is at stake
   Name the trust issue directly rather than managing it indirectly.
   The Trust Triangle
4. Shift from one-person to two-person psychology
   Stop managing your distress alone and start managing it together.
   Secure-Functioning Relationships
5. 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
6. 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
7. 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
8. 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
9. 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.
10. Be transparent about your competence limits
    Name what you can do, what you can’t, and what you’ll need to learn — before you are found out.
    The Trust Triangle

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