What a load of malarkey! The idjits running projects have no idea who to trust and they’ve never earned anyone’s trust in their lives; so they lie.

From the web site, Scrum.org

…trust is a feeling.

Trust is a characteristic of a relationship, of many interconnected and overlapping relationships.
It may be challenging and complex, but trust is essential to enable agility. So let’s define what trust is and the elements required to build trust.

What is Trust

Trust is a willingness to be vulnerable. When I trust, I am essentially making something important to me vulnerable to the actions of someone else.

Distrust is when I don’t feel that something I have made vulnerable to you is actually safe with you.

http://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/how-build-trust-enable-agility

Bollocks!

Here’s the definition that’s real, and no one wants to use for many reasons:

Trust is knowing that someone will sacrifice significant parts of themselves for you, and you know you would sacrifice significant parts of yourself for them. Those parts may be emotional, professional, financial, societal, or more.

Trust is not awarded like lottery winnings. Trust is not something you can give because you like someone. Do you understand? You cannot simply give your trust: the other person has to earn it. You cannot simply ask for trust: you must earn it! If you say you trust someone but they haven’t earned it, you’re not talking about trust. More likely, you’re talking about emotional manipulation.

This is why so many managers, coaches, and masters speak of trust like a cookie: something handed out or grabbed while no one else is looking. This makes sense to managers, coaches, and masters because they’ve never earned someone’s trust and don’t know how it all works.

They think it’s unicorn feathers.

Trust is awarded by actions. Many want to convince you to award trust because of some label they attach to themselves. Trust comes from consistent, repeated, behavioral actions. It comes over time. Trust derives from what you do; and what you do is evidence of who you are. Don’t get this upside-down.

You can earn trust by sitting beside someone and working with them on a problem they can’t solve. You don’t have to solve it for them. In fact, it’s better if you don’t. Let them solve it. Give them whatever part of your or your mind you have on the problem and have their six while they work it out.

You can earn someone’s trust by doing the right thing; and doing the thing right.

You can earn trust by standing up for a team member when a manager bullies them or demands they work in a way that harms the product, the emotional integrity of the team members, or violates someone else’s trust.

You can earn team members’ trust by delivering an exceptional product that compliments their hard work on their exceptional product.

Slackers, pretenders, liars, fakers, back-stabbers, and status-climbers cannot earn anyone’s trust. They are, already and by their actions, untrustworthy.

Some even go so far as to attempt to redefine trust so they can trick you into trusting them. For instance, fooling you with the transparency rubric is very common in our business.

Someone who cannot do what you do for a living can never earn your trust. Maybe you can substitute a secondhand respect for their need for trust. Respect is earned, too. More on that later.

Epilog:
A decade of trust can be lost in a single second by betrayal.