Can You Really Measure Trust?

The Story Behind the TRUST OR™ Equation

“Trust is subjective. You can’t measure it.”

I’ve heard this line countless times — from leaders, investors, even close friends. And at first, I agreed. Trust seemed too human, too fragile, too invisible to ever put into numbers.

But over time, I realized something: trust leaves signals.

We feel them in our gut long before we name them.

And if you can observe them, you can measure them.

From Boardrooms to Breakthroughs

For more than 20 years, I sat in boardrooms, across negotiation tables, and inside high-stakes global sales conversations.

What struck me wasn’t just the wins — it was the losses.

Time and again, deals didn’t collapse because of price, product, or competition. They collapsed because trust quietly broke down.

I started noticing the same patterns:

• Leaders overriding their gut instinct.
• Words polished on the surface, but disconnected from reality.
• Teams nodding in silence even though everyone disagreed inside.

These “overrides” kept repeating. And every time, trust eroded.

Turning to Science

I wanted to know if what I was witnessing could be studied, verified, and systematized. So I turned to science — not just in theory, but in practice.

I studied Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, who showed how humans override intuition with rationalization. I learned from Paul Ekman how micro-expressions leak truth, and from Antonio Damasio how the body signals reality before the brain catches up.

From linguistics, I drew on John Searle and J.L. Austin, who revealed how words aren’t just descriptions but actions — and how they can align or betray meaning. I connected this with George Lakoff’s insights on framing and metaphors, and Deborah Tannen’s work on conversational style.

From neuroscience and physiology, I turned to Joseph LeDoux on fear responses, and Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory, which explains how our nervous system constantly signals safety or threat.

And from leadership science, I looked at Stephen M.R. Covey’s idea of trust as an organizational asset, Patrick Lencioni’s team dysfunction model, and Amy Edmondson’s work on psychological safety.

But I didn’t stop at theory. I coded it.

• I built a library of 24 trust cues, 24 trust-carrying language patterns, and 4 distortion behaviors.
• I segmented communication into 9 channels: words, tone, body, face, breath, timing, virtual presence, relational stance, and even energy.
• I tested them on movie scenes, political speeches, and real boardroom conversations from my own career — the Sanofi boardroom, Broadcom negotiations, high-stakes deals where I had felt trust collapse.

Piece by piece, the fragments of research and practice began to connect.

What was once scattered theory became a usable system.

A rhythm.

An equation.

The Equation Emerges

Step by step, the building blocks became clear:

• T → Truth cues: alignment between inner state and outer action.
• L → Language alignment: words that reinforce or betray meaning.
• R → Rhythm: the timing and flow that makes communication feel congruent.
• D → Distortion: when something doesn’t match — tone against words, gestures against message.

From there, the formula was born:

TRUST OR™ = (T + L + R) / D

A simple equation. But behind it, a radical idea:

Trust is not abstract. Trust has structure.

Crash Testing the System

I didn’t want a pretty theory. I wanted something that worked under pressure. So I tried to break it.

• Movie scenes & speeches: we scored dialogues, debates, and political addresses. Did the equation reflect when the audience lost trust? Yes.
• Boardroom simulations: we analyzed real sales conversations. Could the system highlight why trust collapsed? Yes.
• Overrides in action: body freezes, verbal contradictions, collective silence, identity masks. Each mapped perfectly to the variables.
• Stress edge cases: when people dissociated under pressure, distortions spiked — proving why D had to sit in the denominator.
• Normalization: we calibrated scoring (0–30 ranges, repetition logic) so results scaled consistently across contexts.

Every crash test was designed to kill the equation. Instead, each one reinforced it.

The Paradox of Measurement

Skepticism is natural. It should be.

But here’s the paradox: the moment you see trust expressed as cues, rhythms, and distortions, it no longer feels subjective.

It feels observable.

It feels measurable.

It feels inevitable.

Why It Matters

Because trust isn’t just a “soft skill.”

It’s the invisible factor that determines whether leaders lead, whether deals close, and whether organizations thrive.

For the first time, we have a way to score it — not to reduce humans to numbers, but to give them a mirror. A tool for truth.

🔑 A Question for You

If you could measure and verify trust in your world tomorrow — in your team, your negotiations, your leadership — where would it change the game?

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