Are you the only one who knows how to do certain tasks?

It feels good, important, and safe.

But the work piles up.

Too much rests on you.

No breaks. No sick days.

You feel trapped.

Building systems that allow others to produce your results is the way out.

But if anyone can do it, will they still need you?

Will someone not just steal the system and become your biggest competitor?

Scary, right?

There’s one thing that makes this work.

A strong foundation of trust.

Trust is an “Emergent” quality.

You have to get many layers right.

This article is about one of those layers:

The Balance of Power

Understanding this concept helped us with the trust needed to build the systems.

Systems that gave us freedom.

But it also helped us build trust with our customers.

Especially first-time customers who did not know us.

I’m excited to share how this works.

What is Balance Of Power?

Have you ever felt you “had to” trust someone?

Maybe you needed them badly.

Or they held all the power, and you felt you did not have a choice?

This is not trust, it’s fear.

Trust is different.

Trust exists when both sides can meet eye-to-eye.

Imagine two people who both know they’ll be okay together or apart.

That’s where true trust starts.

Not from need, but from choice.

Think about work.

Picture an employee. Confident. Knows their value.

If this job ends, or they are asked to do something they don’t like, they can just find work somewhere else.

Fear isn’t running the show.

Now, picture someone else.

Feeling trapped. This job is everything.

Maybe they’ve even been doing this job for years.

And yet, every request that smells like giving away any portion of potential power feels like a threat.

With fear in the background, any attempt to create systems that others can follow is a non-starter.

Chaos and disorder feel like security.

Even if it costs the well-being of both the employee and the organization.

What’s the difference? Power!

More specifically, a feeling of balanced power.

It’s not about how much power someone has overall.

It’s about the balance of power between the people who are engaging with each other.

A strong imbalance of power makes trust harder.

Fear creeps in.

Resentment builds.

It feels like control, not teamwork.

But when power feels balanced, everything shifts.

People feel secure. Safe.

They can bring their best selves.

Work becomes about growing together.

Where does this power come from?

Structures

• Boss versus employee
• Business versus customer
• Owner versus renter

Agreements

• Contracts
• Promises
• Commitments

Knowledge

• Someone with access to more information than someone else.
• An expert versus a novice
• Someone with a plan and vision versus someone without.

Relationships

• Someone related to someone with power
• Circle of friends versus someone outside the circle
• People who share the same characteristics, versus those who do not.
• People in an intimate relationship versus people with loose ties.

The way I see it, having power is great!

I think one should do their best to develop their power.

Become powerful so that you can better the world, rather than staying too powerless to do anything about it.

As the business owner, I received this power because of the amount of risk and responsibility I carry.

Me carrying this responsibility, made it possible for others to have certain experiences and opportunities they would otherwise not have.

I would not turn my for-profit company into a non-profit association just to establish trust.

This would change the fundamental structure, and those opportunities would no longer be there.

But I’m very aware of the power I have, and I aim to find multiple ways to use to establish trust at scale.

So, what do you do? Especially if you hold more power?

If you use your power over someone, you break trust.

Not just with that person, but also with others around.

So, how do we create that balance?

How do we build trust?

I use three main strategies.

Think of it like this: Power can be traded for trust.

Knowledge Power

Knowing more than the other person gives you power.

For example, a teacher usually has more “knowledge power” than a student.

The founder of the business often has more knowledge about the business than most employees.

The event staff members who were part of the previous three editions have more power than the new recruits.”

This power also comes from knowing the real story, where someone was diligent, and where they cut corners.

The source of this power is education, refined skills, and being the one who did the job.

So, how do we trade power for trust?

As an event organizer, you know exactly what experience your guests will most likely have.

A first-time visitor only has your words and reputation.

So let’s trade knowledge power for trust.

One strategy we’ve used for 15 years is to run the company with 100% transparency.

My team has full access to all financial statements, salaries, and contracts.

Not only does this anchor any statements into concrete numbers anyone can verify,

But also, it ensures that my team can build systems on top of the same set of data I have.

The Fallacy of the Expert:

Many domain experts wrongly assume that their expertise grants them authority.

“I should not need to justify myself,” or “I should not need to educate others, just for them to realize I’m right”.

You might have already experienced that this is rarely the case.

What’s missing is for you to demonstrate that your expertise has been adapted to my unique situation.

People need to first answer questions like:

• Will this work for me?
• Will this work for my budget?
• Will I be able to continue maintaining this afterward?
• Will I be dependent on you forever if I implement this?

In order to trade knowledge power for trust, you hand over the control to the other person.

• Say things like: “I’ll move at the tempo with which you are comfortable. What questions do you have for me?”
• Or, “let me first properly understand your situation”
• As a business owner, I can give 100% money-back guarantee because I know what experience people will have and can take this risk away from the customer.
• As an employer, I might say: “I will only make a decision after I’ve demonstrated to you that I fully understand the consequences my decision will have on you.”

The biggest gain comes in a long-term relationship.

Within a short time, you enter a zone where they rarely ask for clarification.

They just trust your judgement.

Not because you know your topic, but because they feel you understand how to apply your knowledge to their situation.

What if people take advantage of you?

Especially in situations where you engage with many people repeatedly,

You can afford to take the shorter straw.

Meaning, you give people a lot of power to take advantage of your generosity.

You ultimately still have the power to retract your engagement with the people who misuse this generosity.

The solution is easy; we just stopped engaging with that person.

But being generous like this puts you in a great position.

It builds incredible trust at scale.

Relationship Power

“It’s who you know, not what you know.” Or the modern version, “It’s who knows you”

Influence is power.

Being able to call in a favour, influence a person, or reach people others can’t, is power.

This power can be used to establish or destroy trust.

Trust in the process is harder to establish if two people compete for the job, but only one of them goes golfing with the decision maker.

Or when trying to win an argument by dragging others to “their side.”

But this power can also be used to establish trust by deliberately giving away relationship power to maintain trust in the system.

Your clore relationship with the decision maker causes fear of bias?

Ask for a more neutral person to make the decision.

Relationship power can also be used to risk having difficult conversations.

Perhaps even on behalf of others.

We once made a very difficult decision as a team.

We knew that some in our community would not be empathetic towards our decision.

My team engages with the community on a weekly basis.

But in this case, I was one step removed.

So I channeled all the attacks onto myself.

Letting the team work without fear and stress.

That built trust.

Agreement Power

It can be as little as “Let’s shake hands on it”, all the way to fully integrated structures that are set up in the organization that everybody agrees to follow.

At SwingStep, we established that each big decision first comes with a declared decision-making process.

It could be “I decide as the owner”, all the way to we only go through with this if we have a unanimous agreement.

But the one we used most is called “The Adviser Seeker”-process.

It’s a process I learned from Dennis Bakke’s book, “The Decision Maker”.

The process:

1. Decide who the best decision maker is. Typically, the one with the most domain experience.
2. Decide whose advice needs to be sought.
3. Seek advice and clearly demonstrate understanding.
4. What the decision maker decides is binding. No votes.

This structure is purely based on a set of agreements that we’ve made between each other.

Because of the structure’s clarity, transparency, and logic, we’ve established a strong foundation for trust.

Everyone agreed to the process, which built trust in the outcomes, even if they didn’t personally agree with every decision.

Breaking these agreements obviously breaks trust.

As the owner, I could not veto a decision because I did not like it.

That would completely break trust in the system.

At a minimum, we need to let the decision run for a while to see the outcome.

If the results turned out to be unfavourable, a new process of investigation could be initiated.

Trust goes both ways:

A new recruit could say to their manager:

Let me take on this challenge to show you what I can do.

I promise to have it done before X date, and I will give you status updates every Y time.

By making an agreement like this, the new recruit can get opportunities they otherwise would not have.

What if we need to change agreements?

There are two ways of dealing with it:

1. Make it clear if a structure or agreement is “under development,”. Adjustments should be expected.
2. Make a clear statement of intention to change the agreement. Initiate the advice-seeking process to understand the consequences.

As an event producer, you might need to say:

“I know we agreed the budget was X, but ticket sales are lower than expected.

We need to revisit the catering budget. Let’s discuss options.”

This acknowledges the original agreement before proposing a change.

Now, this would still damage some of the trust.

Better would be to ask for permission: “Can we explore alternative ways that could work in this new situation?”

Make agreements you can hold.

Situations and people do change. We need room for adaptation.

It’s dangerous to say, “You’ll never get fired.”

Even despite the greatest intentions, the situation of letting someone go could arise.

Done right, it won’t be a surprise to anyone.

It should feel like an obvious process and outcome for all involved.

But you can aim to hold yourself to: “You’ll leave better than you arrived”.

I will write a separate article just on setting up an environment for self-actualization.

It’s a fascinating but complex process in itself.

And by the nature of SwingStep being a teaching organization, I might have a unique insight to how it’s done.

Of course, if you subscribe and follow, you’ll get notified when that article is out.

For now, I want to leave you with this:

Agreement power is an incredibly powerful method to establish trust.

However, its potency is only effective to the extent to which people believe you.

Meaning, it is formed by your reputation and demonstrated honor.

If your reputation is broken, even the strongest legal contracts won’t be enough to establish trust.

But if you’ve cultivated it, it could be your strongest tool for establishing trust.

You have my word for it

Conclusion:

Build trust in your organization by trading different sources of power.

We explored trading knowledge-, relationship-, and agreement power to build trust.

You can be creative here. Explore what you have, and what you can or want to give away.

With trust, you and your entire organization can work “on the business” and build the necessary systems.

These systems can liberate you and your employees, providing more space for self-actualization.

Subscribe and follow to not miss the next article on how we create an environment for self-actualization.