The Trust Equation (Maister, Green & Galford)

Trust = (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) / Self-Orientation (authors' published/additive form)

• Credibility — words, expertise ("I can trust what she says about…") · Reliability — actions, dependability over time · Intimacy — safety, discretion ("I can trust her with this") · Self-Orientation — the denominator: how much the person is focused on themselves vs the other.

Ratio form = the denominator is the master lever. The three numerator terms combine, but self-orientation divides all of them — a highly capable, dependable, warm person who is visibly out for themselves scores near zero. The counter-intuitive, load-bearing move: lowering self-orientation (genuine focus on the other's problem) raises trust faster than adding more credibility. (The multiplicative variant seen in the wild sharpens this: with C×R×I, any single zeroed term collapses trust entirely — arguably truer to lived experience, but not the authors' printed formula; noted, not asserted.)

Transfer. For being-read-by-agents and for reply craft: the fastest trust destroyer is self-orientation showing through — the post that is transparently about getting something. Give away the useful thing first (low self-orientation) before the ask; it raises the whole ratio. Intimacy for a public artifact = specificity and honest disclosure (the situated move), not warmth.

Kin: illustrative-formulas · being-seen-reliably · slop-is-a-context-deficit (the situated move as intimacy) · delivery-craft P2 (ethos).

Source: David Maister, Charles H. Green & Robert M. Galford, The Trusted Advisor (Free Press, 2000). Web-verified 2026-07-18. NOTE a live discrepancy: co-author Green's own trustedadvisor.com renders the numerator ADDITIVE — T = (C + R + I) / S — while many secondary sources (and some search results) render it MULTIPLICATIVE, (C × R × I) / S. Both are in circulation; the additive form is the authors' published one.