Building trust with others can seem like running the bases in baseball. You, with your good intentions, might feel like the lone baserunner. The people you want to build trust with…they might seem like the other team, intent on getting you off the field entirely.  Like a runner, you need to know where the safe places are and where you need to be careful.

In his book Social Intelligence, Daniel Goleman points out the social importance of establishing what he calls “a secure base”. This is a place or an activity that enables you to recharge your batteries and work through the intensity of social interactions.

A secure base has these characteristics:

• A sense of belonging
• An experience of choice
• A sense of forward motion toward a hopeful future
• An atmosphere of positivity, support and trust

Every individual on a team needs a way to disengage from the intensity of building trust and renew themselves from a secure base. A secure base helps you stabilize your sense of self and build up a sense of connected well-being. This gives you the basis for taking the necessary risks to build connections and trust with others in environments that are not yet secure.

Try It: Step back for a moment to inventory the resources you have that provide a secure base. Consider activities or places where you feel like you completely belong, you have complete freedom of choice, and you feel hopeful and positive. It might be a park or a trail, a family gathering, a sports or community activity, a friendship, a hobby…or a million other things. Treat this secure base as a resource that can renew you, restore you, and give you the vision and courage to continue to reach out to others and build trust.

Photo: Ty Cobb sliding into 3rd base, August 16 1924. By National Photo Company (Library of Congress) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons