Nathan Smith

Category: LinkedIn Articles

  • Pillars of Trust: Benevolence

    Pillars of Trust: Benevolence

    It’s difficult to know whether someone has your interests at heart until those interests stop aligning with theirs.

    When incentives point the same way, everything looks like kindness or goodwill. Vendors respond quickly because retention matters to their bottom line. The team next to yours helps you because they need a favor next quarter. The plumber texts you back within minutes because he knows you have a kitchen rehab coming up. None of that tells you much – it’s just alignment.

    Benevolence only comes into play when everyone’s alignment begins to shift.

    Earlier in my career, I remember talking with an outside vendor about doing some wireless runs and getting our data closets under control. He came on-site and we did a quick walkthrough together. As we were walking back to our offices, he stopped me and told me he probably wasn’t the best fit. It wasn’t that he couldn’t do the work, but he wanted to make sure we got the help we needed at a price we could afford.

    He pulled out his phone and texted me the number of a colleague who had recently started doing similar work. It was a career-shift for him, and since he was still getting it off the ground, his rates were more in-line with our budget.

    We went with his colleague, but I never forgot it – and later in my career, as budgets and needs shifted, we got him 5X the business we discussed in that first meeting.

    Most of the time, you don’t get a clean test of a person’s character like that. So when it happens, you notice.

    Benevolence answers a different question than competence does. Competence asks whether you can do it, while benevolence asks what you’ll do if interests stop pointing the same direction.

    • “Customer-first” is a passive value statement. Walking away from a deal that isn’t the right fit is an active decision.
    • High customer satisfaction in a good year tells you the product works. A renewal conversation in a tight budget year tells you how important the relationship really is.
    • “We’re a team” is just positioning until somebody has to absorb something that isn’t strictly theirs to absorb.

    In practice, benevolence rarely fails through a single dramatic betrayal. It ebbs through small revealed preferences — the incident writeup that was accurate but incomplete, the default setting that quietly served the platform’s interests more than the user’s, the continued deflection that specific problems belong to “someone else.” None of these are scandals. They’re just moments where caring would have cost something, and somebody chose not to pay.

    Stated intent is the cheapest thing in any relationship. What I look for is a decision somebody can point to where caring about the outcome cost them something. If nobody can name one, the relationship is transactional. That’s a fine thing to be – but it shouldn’t be confused with trust.

  • Pillars of Trust: Ability

    Pillars of Trust: Ability

    You don’t know who’s capable until things go off script.

    There’s a range of meeting types which run according to a specific structure. I remember a specific conference room in Beverly, MA; we’ve got our slide decks fully populated, we know all the right words to say (even though I spent way too long designing that one diagram), and personally, I’m looking forward to the Kudos at the end for our solid presentation skills.

    The meeting was running on auto-pilot when my colleague gets thrown a question they weren’t expecting. It was from a senior internal executive, one who didn’t normally attend these meetings. It grew more tense as people around the room nodded along, indicating their shared interest in how we may respond to the curveball query.

    I don’t know exactly how my friend felt in that moment, but he smirked. A warm expression which at least to me conveyed ease, confidence. He went on to answer the question succinctly and directly. What I remember is that his answer made it clear he understood the question, he was able to deduce why they asked the question, and he had thought about it himself. In truth, I don’t actually remember the content.

    He walked away from that room more credible with our executive team than he walked into it.

    I’ve been in plenty of rooms where it goes exactly the opposite direction.

    Not a quotes guy, (my memory doesn’t work like that) but I do like this one:

    Difficulties are the things that show what men are (αἱ περιστάσεις εἰσὶν αἳ τοὺς ἄνδρας δεικνύουσιν).

    Epictetus, Discourses

    While I wouldn’t fully endorse his extrapolation that then hardship should always be viewed as God testing you, it is true that pressure often reveals in us what competencies we have honed to the point of being instinctual vs areas which still require rehearsal.

    It answers the question: have you internalized your ability.

    We trust a pilot because of how they handled the reading or the storm they didn’t expect, not because of their flight hours. We trust a surgeon because of how they reacted to the case that didn’t look like what they expected, not because of the diplomas on they have on the wall.

    Patterns beat credentials every time.

    • A diploma says you can do it, but a pattern of handling hard cases demonstrates you do.
    • A clean diagram or slide deck is just a claim; what’s your track record?
    • “We use AI” is a posture, but “here is how it helps us achieve X” is competence.

    In practice, trust rarely collapses through a single dramatic failure. It drains through small competence gaps — the deployment that worked but no one could explain in detail, the control that fired but no one could trace, the model that performed but no one had ownership. The same erosion happens anywhere people are relied on. Reputations don’t often disappear in a moment, but drain in the small moments where the person in charge couldn’t account for what just happened.

    The useful question is not “are we capable?” It’s “can we demonstrate our capability under pressure?”

    What’s one area you have stated competence, but could use more practice? More honing, internalizing?