Second, these efforts should involve the participation of as many people as possible. When people feel they haven’t been heard they tend not to trust. But when their input is a regular, normalized part of how a setting functions, they’re better able to trust it even when they disagree.

Mississippi was seeing. He put it simply: “if you really want to do something with somebody else, really want to work with that person, the first thing you have to do is make a personal connection. You have to find out who it is you are working with.”

I think of seeing as the most important component of trust-building.

Successful efforts at building trust are often achieved through trial-and-error experimentation in the local setting in which they are to be used. Remember how Renick handled the problem of students losing their Hope Scholarships. He started small. He tried things and kept track of their effect, jettisoning or improving what didn’t work, incrementally expanding what did work, until he and his colleagues had essentially transformed a university. That’s what I mean by trial-and-error experimentation— modifying systems to better meet, in that case, student needs. A strategy like seeing, welcoming, and supporting can guide the search for tactics needed to build trust. But the process isn’t complete without further effort of developing tactics to implement the strategy, often through trial and error.

For trust to build in a setting, it must be clear that the more powerfully situated are invested in it. It is they who will have the authority to make organizational room for a trust-building connection.

In seeing, each party must accept the importance of making a personal connection with the other— must understand, as Robert Moses did in Mississippi, that they should go talk to each other. They should get a sense of what the others are like; how they see their roles (as teacher or parents, for example); what their intentions, hopes, and concerns are; what conditions and circumstances they are contending with; what their needs are. This getting-to-know-you effort is worth a lot. It conveys respect. And it helps the parties understand each other’s needs— for example, in the parent-teacher conference itself, and in going forward as teacher and mentors. It tells each party what would be helpful to the others and it gives both parties some assurance that they are reasonably well understood.

It’s message, as noted, is that trust-building is a game played largely on the ground. It’s who listens, listens again, is genuinely welcoming, and collaboratively gives people the help they need to succeed in a setting. It’s who’s wise. This is the heart of the matter. And anybody— that is, everybody— can do it.