Trust between practitioner and client

Self-knowledge is also required for trustworthiness. This reinforces that reflective practice and supervision is an essential part of being a trustworthy practitioner.

“Being honest with ourselves about what we know, and what we don’t, about our capacities, skills, and weaknesses, is a pre-requisite for being trustworthy to other people… Trustworthy people are often good at assessing their own skills, knowledge, and limitations, so that they know when to offer help or advice and when to stand back. Sometimes, the trustworthy option is to say ‘I don’t know’, or ‘I’m afraid I can’t do that for you’, even when we know this will disappoint. To be trustworthy to others, we need to be honest with ourselves about what we can realistically manage, and where our weaknesses lie. Over-optimism about our own talents gives rise to one form of untrustworthiness.”  Katherine Hawley (2012)

Context is also important in trust.  For example, the kind of relationship the parties are in or considering.  Trust may look different in a romantic relationship compared to a professional relationship between a client and a practitioner.  The availability of external standards or codes of conduct may also be relevant (for example, the ICF Core Competencies or the NMAS Practice Standards both provide professional requirements that may contribute to trust in practitioners regulated by those standards).  Whether a client is working with a practitioner voluntarily or whether their participation is mandatory is also likely to influence trust.

Why do we need it?

“Imagine you are a coaching client and after your first session … you have concerns about the coach’s competence, you wonder if the coach is being honest with you, and you do not think the coach cares about you. Would you feel that you could open yourself up to the coach and talk about your dreams, goals, and desires?”  Schiemann et al (2019)

The key reason that a client working with a conflict practitioner needs to trust the practitioner is that successful engagement in conflict (whether that is in coaching or in a mediation) requires a level of vulnerability and risk.

Trust in the practitioner helps enhance communication between practitioner and client. It provides psychological safety so that the client can feel comfortable sharing information and openly expressing their emotions.  The ICF Core Competencies expressly include cultivating trust and safety to allow the clients to share freely (core competency 4). Australian researcher Susan Douglas suggests that trust is inherently related to ethical practice as a mediator.

Trust in the practitioner also helps clients to put down their defensive shields and to acknowledge their contributions and choices (both past and future).  It also helps clients to embrace uncertainty, to be willing to take risks and try something different.

How do practitioners build clients’ trust?

Initial trust

Practitioners who are accredited by a professional standards body (such as the ICF or the NMAS) may have a base level of trust established by the system of credentials, qualifications and monitoring in which they are embedded (assuming the client knows about and understands what these bodies represent). Practitioners who are trained and certified, and who practice using a reputable process or model (e.g. facilitative or transformative mediation, or REAL Conflict Coaching™) will also gain trust associated with that way of practising.  Practitioners who have evidence of continuing professional education (e.g. university qualifications or other relevant course completions) will also typically be trusted to be knowledgeable and competent.  Practitioners may also demonstrate trustworthiness by their inclusion on relevant panels or their history of work with reputable organisations, as this implies that others trust them.  Similarly, clients are likely to trust practitioners who have been recommended to them by someone whose opinion they respect. Practitioners also build trust by the way they present themselves and their services (for example, on their website or social media).

Developing trust during service provision

Once the client begins to engage directly with the practitioner, trust can develop as the practitioner demonstrates their competence, but trust is also heavily dependent on the practitioner’s personal attributes.  The practitioner needs to be able to demonstrate reliability, integrity, accountability and confidentiality.  They need to be able to manage their own and clients’ emotions in an effective and respectful way.  They must be able to be open, honest and transparent, and show that they have good intentions towards the client and that they care about the client’s needs.  They need to ensure the client’s physical and psychological safety and to consistently interact in a respectful, empathetic, and non-judgmental manner.

Some interesting research on how coaches typically attempt to build trust with their clients found that inexperienced coaches focused their trust-building behaviour on communicating their ability. In contrast, the experienced coaches focused their trust-building behaviour on communicating benevolence.

Research into how mediators build trust identified five key factors that determined whether a client trusted their practitioner: degree of mastery over the process, explanation of the process, warmth and consideration, chemistry with the parties, and lack of bias toward either party.