Choosing The Wrong Person To Trust

The second series of the BBC reality gameshow The Traitors hosted fabulously by presenter Claudia Winkleman has kept many of us entertained during the dark stormy nights of January. The final attracted a viewing audience of 6.9 million and became the nation’s most talked about conversation over the breakfast table.

For those who haven’t seen it 22 people enter a castle in the most beautiful Scottish Highlands to participate in a game in which a small group of contestants become the “Traitors”, and must work together to eliminate the other contestants to win a grand prize, while the remaining contestants become “Faithful” and are tasked to discover and banish the Traitors by voting them out.

After weeks of backstabbing and plotting Harry Clark, who was one of the original three chosen as traitors at the start of the second series, took home the £95,150 prize money.

His fate in the final lay in the hands of one of the last remaining players Faithful Mollie Pearce who he had convinced throughout the 12 episodes of his allegiance to the Faithful. She remained loyal until the bitter end only to discover he was indeed a Traitor.

When she found out he had been lying she was to say the least emotional!

Mollie had chosen the wrong person to trust.

I know, like me, there will have been a time when you chose the wrong person to trust. The partner who convinced you that they weren’t cheating on you, the manager who promised you the promotion and then championed a close colleague who then got the job, the friend who shared something personal about you with others when you had asked for it to be kept confidential.

Those life experiences can be very painful and the scars can have a lasting impact that influence the decisions we make for years to come.

Trust comes up in coaching sessions often. Usually when it has been broken. It isn’t always obvious at first but often appears when someone feels stuck and is fearful about taking action to move forward.

So when it comes to trust here are three questions I ask clients to help them get some new insight, adopt a more helpful belief and encourage them to trust themselves and their resourcefulness just a little bit more.

1. What do you know now that you didn’t know then?
Hindsight provides a lot of wisdom. We make decisions based on the information we have. Yet we judge ourselves and benchmark our past actions using new information gained. In Faithful Mollie’s case– she wasn’t party to any conversations about Harry so she could only go on her own experience of him. She had no evidence of him being a Traitor.

2. What would you have done differently?
Spending some time working out a new strategy with the new information you have doesn’t guarantee success but it does mean that you put yourself back in control by trying something new when facing a similar situation It can be as simple (and as hard) as being prepared to ask the difficult question, following through on your instincts, check your assumptions.

3. What do you need to let go of?
When I ask this question to a client they always know what they need to let go of. Sometimes it is simply letting go of the picture we have in our head of how life is supposed to be!

Trust is the foundation of all good relationships. It means choosing to make something important to us vulnerable to the actions of someone else. So if you are looking to increase your chances of choosing the right person to trust the place you must start with is yourself.