Coaching practices for Trust and Competence

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

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

• When I’m handed something past what I actually know, I nod and act like I’ve got it rather than admit the gap, then scramble in secret to cover
• I keep everything at work behind a polished, guarded front
• I’m competent and I deliver, but people still hold me at arm’s length
• I won’t hand anyone real responsibility until they’ve completely proven themselves first
• When I want people to take me seriously I tend to lead with my résumé and how much I know, and I can feel it land as bragging

Practices that may help

1. 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
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. 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
4. 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.
5. 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
6. Signal credibility without claiming it
   Let your knowledge show through questions and specifics, not through declarations of expertise.
   The Trust Equation, Made Practical
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. 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.
9. Use powerless communication to build trust
   Ask questions and admit uncertainty rather than projecting confidence — it builds credibility with givers.
   Give and Take: The Giver Advantage
10. Invest in the relationship before you need it
    Build relational credit through reliability and initiative, not charm or performance alone.
    Leader-Member Exchange (LMX), Made Practical

Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.