How does "Build sincerity by saying only what you mean" work?

Sincerity trust is damaged incrementally by small misalignments between what is said and what is meant — social white lies, overpromising to avoid conflict, saying "I understand" when you don’t. Each instance is small; cumulatively they create the sense that the person’s words are not reliable guides to their actual state. The repair and the prevention are the same: close the gap between internal state and verbal output.

How does "Build reliability by making smaller, keepable promises" work?

Reliability trust is built by the ratio of promises kept to promises made — a ratio that degrades fast when ambition outruns capacity. The common failure is making large, aspirational commitments that feel motivating to state but are routinely unmet, while the relationship learns that promises are estimates. Deliberately scaling down to commitments you can guarantee shifts the evidence base: every kept small promise adds to the reliability account.

How does "Be transparent about your competence limits" work?

Competence trust is damaged in two ways: by genuinely lacking ability, or by overstating ability and being caught. The second is far more damaging, because it combines a competence gap with a sincerity failure. Proactively naming the limits of your competence ("I know this domain well; this adjacent area I’d need to research") protects sincerity trust and gives the other person accurate information with which to calibrate their reliance on you.

How does "Demonstrate care through visible acts in the other person’s interest" work?

Care trust is the belief that the other person considers your interests, not only their own. It is damaged when someone appears to act in their own interest at the other’s expense, even if unintentionally. The repair and the building are the same: make visible the ways in which you considered their interests — especially when it cost you something. Visible sacrifice or advocacy that benefits them at some cost to you is the strongest care signal.

How does "Extend trust deliberately to invite it" work?

Feltman also defines distrust: the decision to not rely on another’s sincerity, reliability, competence, or care. Trust cannot be demanded, only invited — and it is built by extending it first in low-stakes situations, providing the other person the opportunity to demonstrate trustworthiness. Demanding full trust before any extension is a self-fulfilling trap: neither party can demonstrate they’re worthy of it.

How does "Have explicit trust conversations when trust is at stake" work?

Trust problems are almost universally handled indirectly: through avoidance, rumor, or escalation rather than explicit conversation. Indirect management allows assumptions to harden and the relationship to drift further. An explicit trust conversation — "I want to talk about something that has affected my trust in you" — is uncomfortable but is the only move that addresses the underlying assessment rather than its symptoms.

Charles Feltman — Thin Book of Trust

What is the Trust Triangle and how do you build trust using it?

The four distinct assessments that make up trust — and how to repair each one specifically

Short answer

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.

Most people treat trust as a single thing that you either have or don’t. Charles Feltman’s framework disagrees: trust is a judgment made across four separate dimensions, and knowing which dimension failed is the key to targeted repair. A colleague who is sincere and competent but unreliable has a very different problem than one who seems reliable but doesn’t actually care about your interests. The practices here apply the Trust Triangle to building, maintaining, and repairing trust in real relationships.

The practices (7)

Why it works

When trust breaks down, the instinct is to apologize for "not being trustworthy" — a global statement that addresses none of the four dimensions precisely. Feltman’s insight is that each dimension fails for different reasons and requires different repair. Sincerity failures require honesty correction; reliability failures require behavioral follow-through; competence failures require capability building or role clarification; care failures require visible alignment of interests. Generic trust repair misses the specific lever.

How to do it

1When trust feels damaged, ask: "Which of the four dimensions is the real problem — sincerity, reliability, competence, or care?"
2If you are not sure, ask the other person directly: "What specifically did I do or not do that affected your trust in me?"
3Match your repair attempt to the dimension: a commitment (reliability), an honest statement (sincerity), a demonstration of skill (competence), or a visible action in their interest (care).
4Don’t offer all four apologies for all four dimensions — specificity signals that you actually understand what happened.

Evidence

Mechanistic

Trust repair research consistently finds that targeted repair attempts (addressing the specific violation) outperform general apologies; the effectiveness of the Feltman framework’s dimensional approach is consistent with this finding.

Honest caveat: Feltman’s four-dimension model is a practitioner framework; trust repair research uses different taxonomies. The directional finding (specific outperforms general) is well supported, but exact dimension labels are Feltman’s.

— Kim, Dirks & Cooper (2009), repairing trust through specific versus general apologies, Journal of Applied Psychology

Common mistake: Repairing the wrong dimension — offering to try harder (reliability repair) when the actual problem is that the other person doesn’t believe you care about their interests (care failure).

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