The Power of Care: Building Trust That Lasts

What if the most powerful way to build trust was also the simplest: showing genuine care for others’ concerns and interests? 

This week, we’ll share two easy practices you can use right away to make care the foundation of every relationship.

In this episode of Practicing Connection, Coral and Jessica explore the fourth distinction of trust - care - drawing on insights from Charles Feltman’s work and their own experiences. 

Jessica shares why care is her favorite trust distinction and explains how it’s the foundation that gives meaning to competence, reliability, and sincerity.

You’ll learn two practical ways to put care into action:

• Ask, Listen, and Share, a simple cycle for surfacing and honoring each other’s concerns and hopes, and
• The 10-Second Compassion Exercise, a quick, adaptable mindfulness practice you can use before, during, or after any interaction.

Whether you want to strengthen your team, connect more deeply with colleagues, or simply create a more caring environment, these practices will help you build trust that truly lasts.

Links and resources from this episode:

The Thin Book of Trust (Third edition), by Charles Feltman

Transcript

CORAL OWEN: [00:00:00] Hello. Thanks for listening to the Practicing Connection Podcast. I'm Coral, my co-host, Jessica is here today as well. And we're going to be talking about the fourth distinction of trust, which is care. And Jessica will not only be sharing one practice with us today, but two, what a treat. Hi Jessica, how are you today?

JESSICA BECKENDORF: I'm great. Yeah, you get two for one today. I just couldn't decide between the two. So I said, “Oh, forget it, I'm just gonna do both of them.” So yeah, it's been a really fun week to work on this, and actually it's been just an interesting week overall. I've had one of those weeks where you're over here working on this thing and then someone's like, “Oh, but over here you have to get this done too.”

And so then you switch over to that thing and you are working on that. And then someone over in another place is like, “Hey, but by the way, don't forget. You've gotta do this as well.” 

And through all of this, there was this one little sort of oasis. [00:01:00] I heard something this week that has really been sticking with me. I was at a meeting where someone was describing all of the ways that they've worked to make their work and their organization sustainable financially from a capacity standpoint as well. And when they got around to talking about change, the kind of change that we can't control, the change that we know we need to make, but we've been dragging our feet on sometimes that's letting a program go, whatever that is for you, they shared this really amazing nugget. 

And mind you, this came at a time when I felt pulled in many directions, so it was just this great little thing that stuck with me. And what they said was, “Sometimes we need to decide to let go or be dragged along,” and it's really stuck with me. Later in the week actually, I was talking with a friend who told me she had decided to back out of a project that she had co-founded, after years of putting [00:02:00] her heart and time into it. In fact, I was one of the co-founders along with her, but I backed out years ago because of the way my role changed. 

And because of this nice little nugget, the first thing I said to her was, “Congratulations, you decided to let go.” Right? And I think a lot of us have something that we're holding onto, like old routines or projects that we love, but are now going through some significant changes. Or maybe even grudges. I mean, none of us hold grudges here, but - I hope!

CORAL OWEN: Speak for yourself!

JESSICA BECKENDORF: No, I certainly have been there as well, but sometimes the hardest but the most freeing thing is to just let it go and stop letting it drag us along.

I think the key is learning to notice when we are being dragged along. That's the hard part.

CORAL OWEN: Yeah. Oh, I love that so much. And that really does resonate. One of the things that I've just had to practice a lot [00:03:00] throughout the years, you know, is wearing many, many different hats. So I 100% understand what you were talking about, is that finally that shift of sometimes you have to say no or just throw on the parking brake or step away from something or let go.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. 

CORAL OWEN: But that perspective shift of realizing that sometimes you're letting something go to create space for something new, or more peace in your life or more balance, it can be a really radical shift, and sometimes it is very, very freeing to have that shift in perspective,

JESSICA BECKENDORF: You know, your amazing positive spin on this, right, so I'm using language, you know, “We need to let go or be dragged along.” That sounds very negative. Your positive spin on this though, is making me realize that it's hard to notice when we're being dragged along, but actually that might be the clue, right?

If you think about a project or think about a situation, do you feel like you're being dragged [00:04:00] along rather than being fully part of it, the way you'd like to be or the way you used to be? And if you feel like you're being dragged along, what can you let go of? Anyway. I appreciate your positive spin on that.

CORAL OWEN: So we actually have three practices for you today. 

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah, right! That was a practice too.

CORAL OWEN: Oh man. But yeah, so I always love getting your perspective at the start of our conversations, Jessica, thank you so much. And we would also love to hear what's inspiring you all are listeners, so you know, don't ever hesitate to drop us a note that you can reach us at practicing connection@oneop.org.

And we actually do see and respond to every message and we can't wait to hear from you.

- break -

CORAL OWEN: So as we alluded to earlier, we actually do have sort of a two-for-one episode for you all today. Jessica, can you tell us a little bit more about these two different practices you'll be sharing today, and also why did you choose them?

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Of course. I've been so excited to talk about care. [00:05:00] Because you know, as I've mentioned in previous episodes, I've been using this work for quite a long time and teaching it in different workshops that I do, and care is my favorite.

I'll take a moment here just to quickly recommend to our listeners that if they haven't yet heard our interview with Charles and Ila, to go check it out now. I mean yes, you can pause and go and check it out first, but it's actually not a prerequisite for this episode or anything like that. But you'll get a really great explanation of the care distinction of trust, and I'll share a little bit here as well.

So care is often regarded as possibly the most important of all of the distinctions. Sincerity, competence, reliability are the other three. I think all of the distinctions are important, but I guess I would describe care almost as like the foundation. It's what makes all of the other distinctions more meaningful.

It kind of [00:06:00] turns the actions of those distinctions into meaningful relationship building. That's from my perspective. But given that this podcast is called Practicing Connection, it probably makes sense that care is my favorite distinction. So care is about how much you believe the other people you're working with.

Care about your concerns and your interests, and likewise, it's about how much others believe that you care about their concerns and their interests. Without care, you can still deliver with competence, you can still deliver reliably and you can still deliver with sincerity. 

But the consequences of not developing the care distinction is that people may only extend their trust to you in certain circumstances, or again, you might only extend your trust to others in certain circumstances. Or worse, if people don't trust that you care about their concerns or interests [00:07:00] or that you don't have the bigger picture team or organization's goals at heart, they might actually not even trust you at all, regardless of how well you deliver across the other distinctions.

So I chose two practices today since care is so important. The first I'm calling, “Ask, Listen, and Share,” from The Thin Book of Trust, and I chose it because it's a really great way to efficiently get at the heart of what it means to show you care about the project, about the team, the individual, or the organization.

The second is a ten second compassionate exercise that I adapted from the Center for Healthy Minds. I chose this because it's so easy to practice and we can use it before interactions or meetings or after interactions or meetings, or even during. Once you've practiced up a bit, you can do that right when you're sitting in the room with people.

CORAL OWEN: These both sound like wonderful practices and I cannot wait to dig into the [00:08:00] first one. Could we start with the Ask, Listen, and Share ?

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. So first you are going to want to choose somebody at your office to practice this activity on the next time you meet with them. Take a moment to just simply ask them what their interests and concerns are.

So make this topically related. So maybe it's a project. Maybe it's about the team, the organization, or some other topic that's important and you know, salient to the two of you. So you're gonna ask them what their interests and concerns are, and then I want you to just listen. Listen to what they're sharing, and when you have a moment point out where you both have some common interests. 

And then I want you to share your hopes and desires for the work overall. This is kind of the bigger picture, hopes and desires, and you can actually start the cycle again by then asking them to share [00:09:00] theirs. And again, pointing out where there are some commonalities, and then listen to them as well. So, Ask, Listen, Share.

I think it's super simple. Let's ask less about the tasks and more about interests, concerns, hopes and desires.

CORAL OWEN: I love that so much because there's such, I'm just envisioning like this bridge that you're building towards the other person as you're hearing them and like inviting them to kind of build their bridge towards you.

That's just what I envision that conversation to look like, so that was wonderfully simple. This next one also sounds very straightforward, but beautiful just as well. Could you share a little bit more about the ten second compassion exercise that you also chose?

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Absolutely. For those of you who don't know, we actually write out our descriptions of the exercise, so Coral's able to preview everything.

So this ten second compassionate exercise, there's a couple of ways to do this. Just like [00:10:00] anything that we ever tell you to do, you can decide to practice it in whatever way is most meaningful to you. It does help some people to start by running through this activity while imagining someone that they love and care about before moving on to someone else, right?

Because then you're able to think about what it feels like to say the phrases “I'm going to give you,” towards someone that you love, and so it kind of helps build that compassion muscle. I actually find it helpful to do this with and for anyone, it kind of reminds me that we're all human, but it can be really helpful to start by thinking of someone that you already love, to say these phrases for them before you move on to someone else.

All you need to do is think of the person you want to develop some compassion for or extend some compassion to, and repeat a few phrases of compassion. I'm gonna give you a few phrases to get you started, but you can personalize them for this situation if you like. I usually like to [00:11:00] use these just because it makes my practice easy to use, because I've memorized the phrases.

So the three phrases I love best are, “May you have happiness. May you be free from suffering. May you experience joy and ease.” 

“May you have happiness. May you be free from suffering. May you experience joy and ease.” 

I said that twice because it's often helpful to repeat it more than once. You don't have to say it out loud, you can just think it. Whatever works for you. 

Really, this is about you and what you need in your own compassion building practice. This was heavily adapted from the Center for Healthy Minds Compassion mindfulness meditation. We're actually gonna be linking to the full exercise in the show notes if you'd like to go a little bit deeper with that.

CORAL OWEN: Awesome. I love how simple and accessible both of these are, and you can seriously [00:12:00] do them anywhere in a multitude of different situations. 

So thank you so much for walking us through those, Jessica. 

JESSICA BECKENDORF:This was absolutely my pleasure. 

CORAL OWEN: Alrighty. So thank you all again so much for joining us in this Practicast series, talking about the wonderful distinctions. And we do again highly recommend, if you hadn't yet listened to our foundational conversation with Charles and Ila, please go back to the beginning of June and you can find that for your reference. 

And so that is it for this episode. Thanks again for joining us and if you did enjoy this episode or find it of use, we do invite you to click that share button in your podcast app to share it with a friend or colleague.

We're really excited to be back with you again next week with a new episode. And until then, keep practicing.

CREDITS: The Practicing Connection Podcast is a production of One-Off and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense under award number 2 0 2 3 4 8 7 74 3 3.