Friend and Foe: When to Cooperate, When to Compete, and How to Succeed at Both (14 page)

Credible institutions are costly to build—and costly to maintain. They require our support even when, and sometimes especially when, they give us bad outcomes. And when it came to Alton Logan, the criminal justice system delivered an outcome that was shockingly bad.

In 1982, during a robbery at a McDonald's in Chicago a young man shot and killed a security guard. The scene was chaotic, but the police caught Alton Logan, who witnesses identified as the killer. Although Alton professed his innocence, he was sentenced to life in prison.

But two lawyers, Jamie Kunz and Dale Coventry, knew that Alton was innocent. They were sure of it. So sure, in fact, that they signed an affidavit swearing to his innocence and even had it notarized. Then they did something bizarre. They put that affidavit in a box and hid it away.

Why?

While Alton's case was going through the criminal justice system, the police arrested a man, Andrew Wilson, for murdering two Chicago police officers. Andrew confessed to the robbery and murder at the McDonald's to his lawyers, Jamie Kunz and Dale Coventry. This confession, however, was protected under the powerful institution of attorney-client privilege: the law that says when you meet with your lawyer, your lawyer can't share what you tell him with anyone else. Attorney-client privilege exists to protect the rights of defendants and to ensure that they get the best counsel possible; the only way to secure an effective defense is to be able to be completely open and honest with your attorney.

Jamie and Dale
knew
that Alton was innocent, but they could not reveal that information without violating the principle of attorney-client privilege. Had they done so, they would have failed to deliver the best defense they could muster for their client, Andrew Wilson, and they would have been disbarred, never to work as lawyers again. Of course, they pressed Andrew to come clean, but he insisted that they keep that information secret until his death.

When Andrew finally passed away (after serving a life sentence in prison for the murder of the police officers)—26 years later—Jamie came forward with the affidavit that would finally spring Alton, at age 54, from prison. As Alton walked out of the Cook County Jail, tears streamed down his face.

In reflecting on Alton's ordeal and the 26 years in which Jamie and Dale had locked away the secret information that could have freed him, Barbara Cannon, Alton's aunt, reflected, “We're not angry. They did what they had to do.” Why was she so understanding of a system that had kept her nephew imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit? Quite simply, because she believed in the institution and she understood the principle that forced Jamie and Dale to keep their client's confession secret.

For institutions to work, they must command our respect. And in her statement, Alton's aunt reveals the reverence we can hold for our legal institutions—even when they delivered a devastating outcome.

So far, we've talked about the role of warmth and competence in building trust. But is there such a thing as projecting
too much
competence? Are there times when being vulnerable might hold benefits for us?

In their profession, psychiatrists face a daunting challenge. After meeting a new patient, they often have only a short period to get their patients to trust them with some of their innermost secrets. The tools psychologists use to build trust quickly help us understand key insights about trust that can help us succeed not just in psychology, but in nearly every profession where building trust quickly can help secure a competitive edge.

So how do psychiatrists do it? Take the example of one of our former executive education students, Tom. He would employ some surprising strategies. Recall how, in the last section, we explored how professionals build trust by finding ways to highlight and showcase their credentials? Well, Tom would do the opposite. When he met a new patient, rather than talking about his credentials or training, he would start off by dropping his pencil, telling a bad joke, or spilling his coffee. Other doctors, after meeting a new patient, point to their hearing aid and explain that their hearing isn't very good. Why would they do this? Why start a meeting by pointing out a weakness or making a clumsy mistake?

We can begin to answer this question by looking at a classic study led by Elliot Aronson at the University of Texas at Austin in the 1960s. Participants listened to a taped interview of a college student trying out for the College Quiz Bowl team (this was back in the 1960s, when representing your college in the College Bowl was very prestigious). As part of the interview process, the “candidate” (who was really working for the interviewer) was asked 50 difficult quiz questions; they also shared some background information about themselves.

Unbeknownst to the participants, Elliot and his team created four versions of the interview. In one version, the “candidate” answered 92 percent of the questions correctly and had been an honors student, the yearbook editor, and a member of the track team in high school.

A second version had this exact same stellar performance of 92 percent correct, but tacked onto the end of the interview was a pratfall: The candidate spilled coffee. On the tape, participants heard the clatter of a cup and saucer, the scraping of a chair across the floor, and the candidate exclaiming, “Oh my goodness, I've spilled coffee all over my new suit.”

In a third version, the candidate answered only 30 percent of the questions correctly, and had earned average grades, was a proofreader for the yearbook, and had tried out for, but not made, the track team in high school. And the fourth version replicated the interview of the less impressive candidate, but ended with the same coffee-spilling pratfall.

After listening to one of the four different interviews, participants rated the candidate. Here's the question: Whom did they like best?

As you might expect, participants liked the high-performing candidate better than the low-performing candidate. But what about spilling the coffee? Strangely enough, it turns out that they thought more highly of the high-performing person who spilled coffee than of the high performer who had been less clumsy.

A number of studies have since replicated these results and offered the same explanation: Highly competent people can make themselves appear more approachable by committing a pratfall. A small blunder makes them seem a little vulnerable, and this vulnerability makes them seem approachable and warm.

And so, when you enter a psychiatrist's office and see their fancy degrees and other trappings of modern medicine, you automatically perceive them to be competent and capable. Making themselves vulnerable by spilling their coffee or telling a bad joke is what helps them seem just a bit more human—and this projects warmth.

The effectiveness of this strategy debunks the common assumption that trust is something that can only be built
slowly
over time. By making yourself vulnerable, it is possible to build trust in less time than it takes to mop up a spilled latte.

Of course, there are many ways to make ourselves vulnerable. Instead of spilling coffee, we can reveal a secret or make a mistake. One of our executive students was seen at work as highly competent but cold, so she tried a new tactic: She purposely began to introduce typos and grammatical errors in some of her e-mails to colleagues, to make her appear more human, and thus warmer. And indeed, her workplace relationships
improved
after she started including typos.

But not all pratfalls are good. We want to emphasize a key finding from the Aronson study. To get the benefits of appearing vulnerable, you have to establish your credibility
first
. It was the high-performing student who benefited from spilling the coffee. And think back to Ron Klein, the congressman who beat the powerhouse incumbent. His competence was never in question. Without his credibility, talking about his son to make him seem warm would not have been effective in winning voters' trust. Or, take our former student who purposely placed typos in her e-mails. She only did this
after
she had demonstrated her competence.

The other side of that coin is that you must be careful not to make yourself vulnerable in a way that undermines your credibility. Again the context matters. Psychiatrists can build trust by spilling their coffee and saying, “I've never been very good with my hands.” Surgeons cannot. It is essential that the vulnerable episode does not compromise your credibility or competence in a domain in which you are trying to inspire trust.

As long as you are already perceived as competent, embarrassing yourself can be another way to appear a bit vulnerable. We saw this firsthand with a former student, JP La Forest. Several years ago, he represented an American auto manufacturer as a liaison engineer in a Japanese company in Yokohama. He was the only American in the office, and he was frustrated that he was always listed as a visitor in the minutes of the meetings. One night, he went out on the town with his Japanese counterparts. They ate, drank, and sang karaoke. In all of the official documents issued from then on, JP was no longer listed as a visitor; instead, his name appeared along with the local office staff.

Why does singing off-key, revealing a secret, or making a mistake build trust? As most of us have learned the hard way, karaoke can be embarrassing. But it is precisely for this reason that it can help build trust. When you sing karaoke with your friends, sometimes the louder and worse you perform, the more you bond.

Embarrassing experiences—like off-key karaoke performances—are about shared vulnerability. Shared consumption of alcohol can build cooperation too, but just be careful to balance these benefits with the harm that alcohol consumption can cause. In addition to impairing our motor coordination, alcohol can blind us to issues that, upon sober reflection, seem utterly obvious. And this can lead to decisions with far graver consequences than an off-color comment to your boss. Consider this cautionary tale about the power of alcohol to both promote cooperation and put us at a competitive disadvantage.

As the Bosnian war raged in the former Yugoslavia, Richard Holbrooke led negotiations to broker a deal to end the war once and for all. The leaders of the different factions had failed to reach an accord in prior meetings, but Richard was determined. During the first three weeks of November, 1995, he sequestered the parties in Dayton, Ohio.

During two weeks of intense negotiations, they were able to resolve many issues, but they reached an impasse regarding access to the town of Gorazde. The final discussions came down to a land corridor that would connect Gorazde with Sarajevo. This corridor would be protected under international control; the key issue was how much land and control the Serbians would relinquish.

On November 17, Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian president, and Richard Holbrooke sat down in a special room to hammer out this final point. This room had two key features. First, it was equipped with a hi-tech map of Bosnia. Second, it was stocked with scotch. As they navigated the virtual Bosnian terrain, they drank and drank and drank. Holbrooke commented five years later, “I can remember exactly where I was on Friday, November 17, 1995. At 2:00 a.m. that morning, after four hours of [virtually] ‘flying' through Bosnia's terrain, we carved a corridor connecting Gorazde to Sarajevo…Finally, Milosevic stuck out his hand to me and said ‘Okay, so this is it,' and he drank a toast and said ‘Richard Charles Albert Holbrooke, we have found our road.' ” In honor of the alcohol consumed, they named the corridor “Scotch Road.”

Yet Slobodan Milosevic should have paid closer attention as he drank with Richard Holbrooke that night in Dayton, Ohio. In his scotch-induced haze, it did not occur to Slobodan to include amnesty for himself in the agreement. Not long after the deal went into place, Slobodan was extradited to the International Criminal Tribunal at The Hague where he was charged with war crimes. His trial lasted five years, and he died in his prison cell before the court reached a verdict.

From bonding over a few drinks to revealing a weakness, we have shown that making ourselves vulnerable can help us inspire trust. It turns out that the inverse is also true—avoiding vulnerability can shatter trust and weaken relationships.

This is the classic problem of the prenuptial agreement. People fear being financially exposed and vulnerable and seek to protect themselves. But in the process they undermine trust, as we saw with Peter and Elizabeth Petrakis. For Elizabeth, Peter's refusal to be vulnerable was a thorn that she could never get out of her side—until she ended their marriage.

Deepak Malhotra at Harvard has conducted experiments that echo Elizabeth's experience, when he found that contracts prevent trust from developing. And he has found out why: People use contracts to facilitate transactions, but when people with a contract behave in a trustworthy way, they don't get credit for their trustworthy actions. Observers assume that their trustworthy behavior must have been motivated by the contract, that they were merely being compliant, not trustworthy. Contracts in general, and prenuptial agreements in particular, are classic examples of how our attempts to protect ourselves can backfire and destroy the very thing we want—a trusting relationship.

So far, we have discussed factors that influence why and how we build trust with other people. But as we noted in the introduction, humans evolved as inherently social beings who live and work in
groups
. So, to successfully compete and cooperate in our society, we need to learn how to place trust not just in the right individuals, but also in the right
groups
of individuals. The most common rule of thumb we use—sometimes consciously, sometimes not—is to trust those who are “in” our group and be wary of those who are from other groups. Indeed, whether we realize it in the moment, many of our trust decisions are informed by a simple question: Are you “like me” or not?