Trust is an emotion. And like other emotions, it can be messy and complicated. Psychologist Robert Plutchik has said that trust is one of our eight primary emotions. (Th e other seven are anger, fear, sadness, surprise, anticipation, joy, and disgust.) According to Plutchik, trust is correlated with acceptance, admiration, submission, joy, and love. Trusted experts who consistently bring joy into the lives of the people they serve will eventually be loved by them. Similarly, experts who consistently bring joy without an ulterior motive into the lives of the people they serve will themselves grow to love those people.

Business relationships are typically maintained on the basis of mutual respect, dignity, and separation—not on love, joy, or submission. But just because emotions are muted in professional settings does not mean that the full gamut of emotional undercurrents are not present. In spite of what appears on the surface, businesses are emotional places. People bring their emotional baggage to the table, most of it negative, and the stress of an occupation heightens and accentuates our emotional condition.

Your goal as an SME is to move all customers and colleagues gently yet decisively into the emotional state of trust. You do that by easing apprehension and eliminating fear. Acceptance is a mild form of trust, just as apprehension is a mild form of fear. Mutual acceptance, therefore, is the starting point for trust. Admiration is trust’s most persuasive cousin. Build trust. Seek trust. Demonstrate trust. Abide in trust.