There are three kinds of trust. They are very different from each other. Here's what each is, and what your business gets from each of them...

Level 1 trust is trusting that someone else can do something "well enough."

Think of a potluck dinner in your neighborhood. This is trusting your neighbor to bring something, but asking them to bring chips rather than making something. They won't screw that up...right?

(thanks @usujason for that perfect example).

What you get from this level of trust is the ability to offload tasks that should go well but there's tolerance for mistakes and poor quality. You get to move faster, but you still have to clean up mistakes sometimes.

Trust 2 is trusting that someone can do something just as well as you can. This is delegation.

What you get from this level of trust is true scale. You get more of your time and quality, and the more of these people you can find, the better you can scale.

Trust 3 is trusting that someone can do something you couldn't [maybe ever] do. This is what it feels like to extend your horizons and potential.

When you work with brilliant designers, analysts, sales people, marketers, developers, you feel this.

This is a level of trust that many people struggle with, but this is the level of trust that changes the game.

Some of the reason that people can do things other people can't has to do with knowledge: they have learned something another person hasn't.

But here's the reality...

The much bigger reason these people can do what others can't is because they have psychological and cognitive abilities others can never achieve.

That's a tough pill to swallow, but think about it. We all have limits to our ability to perceive. It's a hard truth.

Creativity is the clearest example. Deeply creative people have access to a world of comprehension and experimentation that the rest of us will never have access to. The right prefrontal cortex in their minds is hyperactive and genius.

We witness this daily in music, art, architecture, storytelling, design, and more.

Hundreds of people graduate from the Berklee school of music every year with similar musical skill, but only a tiny fraction of those people have the creative capacity to make mind blowing music.

And the other artists and students know it. Ask them and they will say, "I have NO idea how they do it."

People at the top of any craft look at the best and literally have no clue how they do it. No ability to deconstruct or understand the inputs. It's just creative magic.

It's like the event horizon of a black hole. Creatively, we all have an event horizon. It can move a bit, but some people's event horizon is not 5% farther, it's billions of miles farther than mine (or yours).

When you learn to accept that, you can start to use trust 3.

That concept applies to cognitive ability, dealing with complexity, and even compassion. A disagreeable person's event horizon for understanding others' reactions is not far from center. Compassionate people understand things that a disagreeable person could never perceive.

The core reason that elite teams thrive and other teams struggle is because of Trust 3, the highest form of trust. They have the emotional and intellectual maturity to trust that others have talents they will never understand.

At this level of trust, you get something magical...

You get the ability to PREDICT things you can't COMPREHEND.

That's a big deal. Most people won't do things they don't understand. But when we trust people who are able to operate beyond our event horizon, we can operate beyond the boundaries of our comprehension.

If you want innovation, you need Trust 3.

If you want engagement, you need Trust 3.

If you want customer success, you need Trust 3.

If you want brilliant code, you need Trust 3.

If you want to avoid mistakes, you need Trust 3.

Don't limit potential to what you understand.

This is why Steve Jobs said A players hire A players, B players hire C players, and so on.

The only A players are people who are enthusiastic about and trusting of other A players. They are the only ones who feel comfortable enough in their own skin to invoke Trust 3.

So here's the question...

Is your culture a Trust 3 culture? Do you wrestle over things you don't understand, or do you operate out of total faith in those who can do what you can't?

Do you debate about the ROI of design? Do you ask what you get out of investing in analytics?

Do you force developers to build things in shorter timelines than they ask for, using fewer resources than they say they need?

These are not Trust 3 cultures.

Those cultures kill you twice.

First, they kill you when projects are under-resourced and falter or fail.

Second, they kill you even worse because you teach people to negotiate internally. You teach them to ask for more than they need because they know going in that you won't give them what they ask for.

You know what another word for internal negotiating is?

Lying.

You are teaching your people to lie about what they need, what projects will do for the business (so you will say yes to their pitch rather than the "no" they expect to get if they say what the project really is).

That second death is the real death of the business. It's the death that transcends your future. While the first death is a missed opportunity, the second is a system that infects every opportunity.

It exposes your business to permanent risk and undermines communication.

So again, do you have a Trust 3 culture?

Get one.