Sympathy Is Not a Feeling: What Adam Smith Got Right About Trust

Most leaders treat trust as something earned through track record and verified performance. But what if that model is fundamentally incomplete? Rae Greiner, professor of English literature at Indiana University, argues that sympathy (and by extension, trust) is not a feeling that passes between people. It is an imaginative, speculative act that requires us to reason about another person's situation without ever fully confirming what they feel. Drawing on Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments and two centuries of the novel form, Greiner reframes what it means to read people, extend trust, and build belief under conditions of genuine uncertainty. For leaders managing teams, navigating organizational culture, or rebuilding trust after disruption, her argument carries a practical edge: the problem is not that we cannot know what others feel; the problem is that we behave as though we can. In this conversation, Greiner and Roman explore the roots of the collapse of institutional trust in the Enlightenment, why the 18th-century novel was essentially a trust-training machine, what it means that we can sympathize with the dead, and why the capacity to change your mind may be the most underrated leadership competency of all. Topics covered: trust, empathy, sympathy, Adam Smith, case thinking, certainty, judgment, Victorian literature, moral philosophy, Dickens, Austen