Trust Equals Intimacy Divided by Risk

Trust

=

intimacy/risk

How about the reverse: Don’t Trust Me.
Or the unknowing: In God We Trust.

How can we balance these three factors?

Problem

Decrease perceived risk. Increase authentic intimacy with friends, colleagues etc.

Solution

We have covered aspects of this before in our Trust post, Trust the Facilitator post, and Don’t be that Guy/Gal post.

We are going to leave it at that. These are personal qualities. There are lots of tips and tricks to over come this, but they are fundamentally personal concerns that can’t be covered in text, video or print, only in person.

Here are some ideas though:

Mirroring: “a human behavior characterized by copying someone else while communicating with them. It is often observed in people exhibiting similar postures, gestures, or tone of voice. It may include miming gestures, movements, body language, muscle tensions, expressions, tones, eye movements, breathing, tempo, accent, attitude, choice of words, metaphors, or other features discernible in communication.”

Common Experience: Play in a football game together. Play foosball together. Play a drinking game together (drinking at a bar doesn’t count.) Go on a hike, play Frisbee Golf…

Social Network Research: Look at someone’s LinkedIn profile, MySpace, Twitter etc. accounts to see what their interest and activities are. 

Trust equals intimacy divided by risk was originally quoted in the book: No-Collar: the Humane Workplace and Its Hidden Costs by Andrew Ross

More from the blog

Innovators are not one instruction.
AI enablement and adoption · Nov 12, 2026
How to Innovate Your Companies Town Hall / All Hands
The innovation function · Nov 12, 2026
Innovation Workshops/Focus Groups Don’t Work Anymore
AI and your job as a compression
AI enablement and adoption · Nov 12, 2026
From Farm to Factory to… Pontifications from a Dave Gray article

Connect your mission to the breakthrough it needs

Innovation work rarely fails for lack of ideas. It fails when what the program knows is spread across systems that don’t share a record. Bring the program, and we’ll show you where it could run on one.

Contracting vehicles

Direct award pathways, no new competition required.

SBIR Phase III

Under 15 U.S.C. § 638(r)(4), a Phase III award derived from Collaboration.Ai’s prior SBIR work may be made without further competition.

DAF DTO BOA

Order through the DAF Digital Transformation Office Basic Ordering Agreement.

Not sure?

We’ll walk through which pathway fits the program. Contact us →