In this chapter, we'll talk about the element of trust. Trust is critical in every kind of relationship on earth. A spouse trusts the other's support and loyalty. An entrepreneur trusts their investor. The investor trusts the entrepreneur's vision and ambition. A business owner trusts their managers and team. Two firms in a business agreement work together because they trust each other's quality of work or merit.
At its core, it wouldn't be wrong to say that trust sits beneath every relationship — a necessary value, a necessity within that relationship's dynamic.
So in the development stage, establishing trust is also laying the foundation. Trust is always something that is built. And its sustainability matters just as much. It's a value that's hard to build and easy to destroy. That's why we'll talk here about building trust — and about making it sustainable.
At its root, trust is fed by two things: capability and cue. Capability, in turn, rests on both negative capability and positive capability. Trust born from negative capability exists through the restraint of an action, through what wasn't done. Positive capability exists through the direct affirmation and execution of an action. Let's explain both in detail.
Negative capability involves danger and harm. To explain this concept, a quote from Jordan Peterson fits well: "A man who is not capable of violence is not a good man, he's just harmless. A man who is capable of violence and doesn't use it, that's a good man." Real virtue is having the capability for bad or dangerous things and choosing not to act on it.
For example, private military companies like Blackwater and Briar are far less trusted than others. Their record of civilian casualties and unethical military conduct behind the lines is high. They had the capability — and they failed to build trust through their negative capability.
There are, of course, other examples. Managers who lead through constant pressure and mobbing instead of proper communication, the Julian Assange situation, influencers who use their reach to tear down brands, or award bodies that hand out recognition based purely on payment — all of these are structures that used their negative capability and damaged the element of trust.
Negative capability, in terms of communication and visibility, isn't as dominant as positive capability, and its effects aren't short-term but long-term. Because of this, many companies shrink or collapse through much smaller, quieter paths without ever realizing it was because they failed to handle negative capability correctly. Understanding this element matters for long-term development and trust.
Alongside this, the second capability element is positive capability. This covers direct actions, active elements. For example: a firm doing its job well, openly communicating its own shortcomings when necessary within the scope of a consultancy, delivering work on time, behaving in line with merit — many examples can be given. Positive capability is the most dominant and solid requirement for building trust in the short term.
The third element is cue — evidence communication. Cue means sharing these trust elements not just with the parties directly affected, but with third parties or a wider audience. This can range from mentioning it as an example at a small networking event, to sharing a reference, to speaking at a major conference. But what actually drives development, what brings growth and success in terms of trust, is precisely this factor we call cue. Capability and trust naturally develop between the parties of a relationship — business or personal — and grow when nurtured with the right steps. But in external communication, in the process of growth and development, it's cue that carries the power of trust and lets it compound for both individuals and organizations.
Now let's look at some defining historical examples of this:
Another striking example of negative capability comes from Costco. In 2013, Costco's then-CEO Craig Jelinek went to founder Jim Sinegal and told him the company's famous $1.50 hot dog-and-drink combo was now losing money, and that the price needed to go up. Sinegal's response became legend: "If you raise the effing hot dog, I will kill you. Figure it out." Sinegal had the capability to raise the price — financially, he arguably needed to. But he didn't. They built their own meat-processing plants instead, switched suppliers. Nearly forty years later, the price is still $1.50. The result: member retention climbed to around 92%, and the stock has risen more than 4,200% since 2000. Sinegal had the capability and chose not to use it — and that became one of the most powerful trust signals in retail history.
The clearest example of positive capability is Warren Buffett's shareholder letters, sustained for sixty years. Since 1965, Buffett has explained Berkshire Hathaway's performance, mistakes, and strategy in plain language, never resorting to complex financial jargon. He has no hesitation sharing lines like "often, nothing looks compelling" with the public. This consistency turned Berkshire's annual meeting into a phenomenon known as the "Woodstock for Capitalists." Over sixty years, the company's total return has exceeded five million percent. But more importantly, in Buffett's own words: "Owners are entitled to hear directly from the CEO as to what is going on and why." Doing what you say, saying what you do — that is the essence of positive capability.
But the story that best shows how decisive cue actually is comes from a fire in Massachusetts in 1995. When three buildings of Malden Mills — the textile factory his family had owned for three generations — burned down overnight, Aaron Feuerstein could have taken the $300 million insurance payout and retired. Instead, he announced he would keep paying full salaries and health benefits to his three thousand employees for ninety days — spending twenty-five million dollars out of his own pocket. "I didn't do it because it was a smart business decision, but because it was the right thing to do," he said. At first, this was an entirely inward-facing decision; Feuerstein's intent wasn't to announce it to the world, just to keep his word to his employees. If the news had never traveled beyond the factory gates, trust would have stayed limited to those three thousand people — strong, but small, a local circle of loyalty.
But that's not how it unfolded. The press picked up a decision that ran completely against the economic climate of the time. 60 Minutes covered it, the Boston Globe called him "the Mensch of Malden Mills," more than thirty thousand fan letters poured in, and President Clinton invited him as an honored guest to the 1996 State of the Union address and praised him from the podium. The same act, the same sacrifice, the same ninety days — but no longer the story of a three-thousand-person factory. It had become a national symbol of "stakeholder capitalism over shareholder capitalism." Feuerstein himself resisted the attention at first, then accepted it; as a former manager of his put it, he came to realize "he was the bearer of a good message." This is exactly where the real power of cue reveals itself: the act itself didn't change, but the way it traveled to a third party expanded the circle of trust from a single factory to an entire country. Without cue, Feuerstein's capability would have remained a story known only in Lawrence. With it, it became a standard for business ethics.
Four stories confirm the same truth from different angles: capability is the event itself. Cue is the way that capability travels into the world. And real growth is captured not just by those who have the capability, but by those who succeed in announcing it the right way.
