Winning Trust under Fire

Once you realize that they have the same wants, needs, and desires that we do, you'll establish the trust of the [ocal·population. you will· be successful. You'll not always be successful; sometimes there are some externaifactors that may prohibit that when you get into some of the more extremist ideologies but that is the exception.-Maj. Leslie Parks, Operational Leadership collection, 2010In war, soldiers often pursue the negative aim of imposing one nation's will upon another through the force of arms. However, at the conclusion of a war, or during activities other than combat, a soldier's primary purpose can become much different: to influence the will of others positively, using constructive means. Military forces often pursue positive actions essential to reassure allies, influence neutrals, and dissuade potential adversaries. Influencing a nation or a cultural group depends on winning the trust of those who can influence others. As such, any soldier or military leader who cannot win the trust of key influencers risks failing to accomplish the mission.How do service members build trust with key indigenous stakeholders-influencers-in the current security environment? In this article, I will describe conclusions from a research project that set out to answer this question. The research consisted of a study of interviews in the Combat Studies Institute's Operational Leadership Experiences (OLE) collection (all interview excerpts in this article are taken from OLE collection transcripts).11 looked for ways soldiers and members of other services reported they had built confidence and gained trust over time. From their experiences, I sought to create a generalized model that future forces could apply to this difficult mission. My goal was to ground the model in real-world experience in Iraq and Afghanistan and to make it easy to understand. Moreover, I wanted to create a starting point for a deeper discussion on this critical skill set.My research indicated that in Iraq and Afghanistan, forces often created and then applied incremental confidence-building measures to win trust over time, while taking into account the cultural context. (For the purposes of this research, confidence building is conceived as a contributor to gaining trust.) Generally, I found these confidence-building measures fell into three categories, which I will call physical measures, communication measures, and relationship measures. A model based on my findings could assist in training soldiers and leaders so they could improve their ability to build trust in often challenging and ambiguous operational environments.2The Importance of Establishing TrustNational-level policy documents, such as Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense, describe the need for forces to conduct a wide array of missions.3 Many require the operational flexibility to build relationships as well as apply military lethal force. Therefore, soldiers and leaders can expect to take on roles that require gaining trust to achieve the nation's policy goals and to protect its vital interests.At the tactical level, building trust often becomes critical to personal survival and mission accomplishment. In Afghanistan today, both combat and noncom-bat units interact with host-nation military, police, or local leaders daily to build legitimacy and set the conditions for a secure environment. What makes this even more of a burden is that in counterinsurgency, discerning whether a person is friend, foe, or fence sitter is not easy. Ideally, when soldiers gain trust at the tactical level, they can reassure those on their side and win over the undecided, and this leads to denying adversaries the support of the populace.4When soldiers assume an embedded trainer or advisor role, they should have the ability to gain trust so they can train and prepare their partner forces for combat. When the partner forces begin to execute real-world missions, they and the advisors must have already established high levels of mutual trust. …