From intelligence operations to the hustles of everyday life, trust, or a level of it, must be given and reciprocated to operate or function properly.

Associate, stranger, asset, enemy or “friend”, not trusting someone simply because you don’t like a person could be a strategic miscalculation.

It seems natural to dismiss a person’s trustworthiness in the event you decide you personally don’t like that person.

This is an error in judgement if that worthiness is solely based on the likability of that person.

Outright negating it this way can lose you fleeting opportunities, valuable information and allies.

Just because you don’t get along with someone, doesn’t mean you can’t trust each other. Just because you don’t like someone’s face, doesn’t mean they aren’t trustworthy. Just because you don’t like someone, doesn’t mean you can’t trust them.

Trusting People You Don't Like

As per the strategy of determining if you can trust someone you don’t like, it’s not about morals or integrity, it’s about predictability and desire.

Realize what a person wants and you can predict they’ll act in their own self-interest.

It’s not full or dedicated trust but with it, you can predict a person’s behavior to a certain degree.

Measuring and using trust as a behavioral predictive tool, it can detach you from making emotional decisions on people you do or don’t like.

Trust is indifferent relative to the things we like or dislike about a person. The reasons we like or dislike a person is subjective while the reasons we feel we can trust a person is (or should be) objective.

Meaning, in an ideal scenario, “dislike” doesn’t equal “distrust”. However, “like” doesn’t equal “trust”.

Trust isn’t necessarily about reliability, it’s about the capacity to mutually stay on the level. As such, you can’t trust someone just because you like them.

You can’t go through life or OPS only ever working with people you like, it’s the same with trust.