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I published a post on LinkedIn this morning, How to survive investor due diligence, here, and most of the people who commented blithely stated that success in business is based on 'trust'.

But what is trust? How is it defined?

Here are some thoughts on this most important of concepts for us as individuals and as a nation.

What Is Trust - and How We Build It

Trust is one of those ideas we think we understand instinctively but when you step back, it’s far more complex. At its core, trust is a bet: a belief that another person will act predictably in ways that won’t harm us and may even help us. It’s both emotional and practical, and the ways we build it differ dramatically depending on where and how we were raised.

In America, trust is built fast.​
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America was shaped by waves of pioneers, immigrants, and settlers, each meeting strangers daily in a new, chaotic world. There wasn’t time to vet someone over generations. Instead, Americans developed a culture of quick self-disclosure and openness as a way to speed up the trust-building process. Sociologist Edward T. Hall, who wrote Beyond Culture (1976), would call this a ‘low-context culture’: relationships are formed quickly, and what matters is what you say and do now, not who your ancestors were. Trust is transactional, visible, and often immediate.

In Europe, by contrast, trust builds more slowly.​
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There’s a deep emphasis on manners, social protocols, and historical or familial connections – a ‘high-context’ approach where the past informs the present. You don’t simply meet someone and pour your heart out; you observe them over time, see how they fit into the social fabric, and let trust grow through shared experiences. Erin Meyer, in her book The Culture Map (2014), calls this a ‘relationship-based’ culture: before business or deep conversations happen, relationships must be cultivated.

And in Japan, trust is inherited as much as it is earned.​
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In Japan, social networks are often multigenerational. Your trustworthiness isn’t as much judged by your words or actions today, it’s built on the reputations of your family, your company, your affiliations. Relationships are carefully tended over years, and once trust is given, it carries enormous weight. Hall’s high-context theory applies here even more strongly, as does Meyer’s observation that in Japan, deep trust precedes most significant decisions.

But how is trust actually created, across cultures?​
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Francis Fukuyama, in his landmark book Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (1995), argued that prosperous societies are those where people can confidently work together without constantly checking their backs. Trust, he said, comes from shared moral values but how those values are recognized varies widely between cultures.

Where trust is built fast, it can also be manipulated fast.​
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In America especially, and particularly in high-stakes fields like commercial real estate capital formation, there’s an entire playbook for engineering the appearance of trust. Robert Cialdini, in Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (1984), shows how people exploit emotional triggers like likability, authority signals, and reciprocity to create the illusion of credibility. The result is that in ‘fast trust’ cultures, appearances often arrive long before substance.

It is a dynamic that Dale Carnegie, author of the enduring classic How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936), understood profoundly. Carnegie taught that trust and influence could be built quickly through sincere interest in others, careful listening, and genuine encouragement. His insights helped fuel the American style of fast trust but even Carnegie warned that authenticity must underpin any effort to win others over, or the trust would be short-lived.

That’s why today, it’s more important than ever to pause and think more deeply about what trust really means.
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Is it consistency?
Is it shared values?
Is it time spent, reputations inherited, promises kept?

Or is it something that looks and feels like trust, but evaporates when tested?

The answer depends partly on where you come from and partly on whether you’re willing to slow down, look past the surface, and build trust the old-fashioned way: patiently, deliberately, and through repeated proof over time.

Final Thought

It’s worth asking: where are we heading as a nation when it comes to trust?
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In an era marked by growing polarization, rapid information cycles, and shifting norms, there’s a sense that the very foundations of trust – in institutions, leadership, and even in each other – are being tested.
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Not by any one administration or political party alone, but by the broader currents of change. If trust continues to erode, the effects will ripple far beyond the political sphere. In real estate – an industry built on long-term partnerships, capital commitments, and shared risk – a breakdown in trust could tighten liquidity, slow transactions, and make collaboration harder.

In the months and years ahead, trust may become the single most valuable – and most fragile – asset we have.
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​Even though it wasn't about 'trust' per se, I would love to hear your view on this subject in the context of my post today on LinkedIn.

​Here's the post. How do you define trust?​

Thanks,
Adam

PS. No new podcasts this week in my latest series, Real Estate Market Watch, current events through a real estate lens. But lots next week so watch for summaries of those in your inbox in the coming days.

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