When you’re working at solving a public problem, you may think that “hard” skills such as decision-making and good planning are the keys to your success. Let me suggest that the “soft” skills that spring from a positive and compassionate spirit may be even more important. And the most important of those soft skills is building trust, especially with opponents.

Whenever I say that to audiences, I see eyeballs rolling up. We’ve all encountered crooked politicians, greedy CEOs, wacko neighbors, or beady-eyed bureaucrats. Why would we think of trusting such people? I say we do it because it not only adds immeasurably to the odds of truly solving the problem at hand, but it also helps counter the toxicity that infects public life.

I contributed to that toxicity in my career as a US diplomat dealing with wars, revolutions and arms sales. I learned the hard way that operating without trust, constantly attacking and defending, usually led—at best—to “victories” that lasted only as long as it took the other guys to lick their wounds and come back at me with even greater force. When I began to build trusting relationships with my counterparts, we actually achieved changes that worked for all our countries. It was a revelation to someone like me, trained to “hit em high, hit em low.” I pass that revelation on to you.

Trust being a two-way street, the process starts with your own actions and attitudes.

Being competent builds trust. When both your allies and your opponents recognize your skills and experience, they feel they’re on firm ground in their expectations of you.

Accountability andhonesty build trust; people know not only that you can do your job, but also that youwilldo it, and that you’ll keep your word.

Respect builds trust. When you value other people’s priorities, needs, backgrounds, outlooks and styles you help them to trust you and to respect those same things in your life.

The most powerful tool I know for building trust is caring for other people and for their situations. Real caring goes past good thoughts to good actions, even when you’re under stress.

Caring is:

•	listening actively and without judgments.
•	imagining yourself in others’ shoes so that you can appreciate their feelings and needs.
•	looking for the positive in others and in their views.
•	minding all the little interactions—small, respectful courtesies matter, including doing personal favors.
•	being personal—even if it makes you uncomfortable.

When you’re this caring you can see difficult people defrost as they begin to trust you and to respond in like manner, really listening to you, imagining themselves in your shoes, finding the positive in you and your ideas—there’s a mirroring process that goes on as they follow your lead onto courteous, caring, productive ground. That’s where you’ll find the true solutions to the problems you’re all addressing.

But you also need to remember the obvious: building trust is risky and doesn’t always work. There are times when the people you’re dealing with simply can’t be defrosted or the situation is just too far gone to even try.

It’s never all or nothing. You’ll rarely have enough information at the outset to make a good appraisal of whether or not trust is possible. So it makes little sense to start with an all-out attack-and-defend strategy. Start out navigating by positives, giving opponents every opening to do the same. And if they do, build on that. All the while, make sure you’ve left yourself enough time, resources, and opportunity to defend yourself if and when it’s clear that the irreversible goal of the opposition is to flatten you. As Wild Bill Hickock should have known, you never sit with your back to the door.

I’ve noticed that most of the people who tell me that trusting in tough situations is naive haven’t actually tried it. Well-considered efforts to build trust are not naive; they consistently lead to real winning for all concerned. That’s hard-headed realism. What’s naive is believing, despite so much evidence to the contrary, that the ancient game of attacking and defending will somehow work next time around.