A Series on Trust

Over the course of this year, I have written about trust. Here is what I wrote and where to find the articles.

Trust, Posts, and Comments

Read Broadly; Question All of It

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I am suggesting that you treat every podcast, blog post, YouTube, TikTok or Instagram video, newspaper report, or television news broadcast as hearsay. Think of every bit of information that you receive as intended on one level to influence how you vote and spend your money. At a deeper level, to isolate you emotionally so that you are neutralized as a voice of reason and action.

At the same time, I think you need to read as broadly as possible. You are not reading to be convinced that they are right. You are reading to become aware of the diversity of perspectives. When you find a perspective that is interesting. Look for something that is critical of it. …

I write about what I know. If I am unsure, I’ll do further research. If then, I am still uncertain, then I won’t write about it

I’m studying, not just reading, but studying, every day to learn to make sense of what I see. …

I am a voice of reason, common sense, and practicality.

I am interested in influencing you to be politically involved at the local level. 

I am writing about things that matter to me.  …

Your latent potential for impacting your local community matters to me. …

This is how we change the world. Slowly. One community at a time.

I value your respect and trust more than your approval. If you disagree with me, that is fine, as long as your reasons are yours.

Lastly, I am interested in helping people create networks where they can create impact that makes a difference that matters.

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Breaking Trust

Two Patterns of Behavior

In business, I saw this shift through two patterns of behavior.

One was a sort of clique or club developing between senior executive leaders. We don’t see the relationship. We can see how similar their actions and their articulation of their actions are. Their behavior manifests itself as leadership representing leadership’s own interest. Some people with whom I have talked describe this as corruption. I describe it as a loss of trust through the breaking of the structural relationship between authority and accountability (See my Where Has Trust Gone?: Restoring Authority and Accountability in Organizations.).

One of the manifestations of this behavior is how governing boards develop to serve the interests of the executive team or the individual members of the board. Unless you are actively involved at this level of an organization or a local community, you could easily have missed this.

The other shift concerns the relationship that the organizational leader has with those who work for the company. I saw this through the eyes of those in the workforce. …

The best way to describe what I see is as a crisis in the perception and role of leadership in our world. The crisis is that leaders no longer represent the company or the nation that selected them to lead. Instead, they represent outside interests. This is not a new phenomenon as I have learned. This breaking of trust by leaders weakens companies, communities, and nations. The crises that we have experienced over the past two years have been made worse because of this pattern of behavior. I have written about this here and here.

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The Trust Engine of Networks of Relationships

Trust is the key to the integrity of every social and organizational structure. Yet, trust is at a low standard in our society today. We are more interested in setting ourselves in opposition to people that we believe are our antagonists, or worse, our enemies. The reasons for this I describe in my post, Social Capital and Mimetic Violence.

To counter this trend, we need to restore trust to the institutions of society. This is not easy. The social and organizational structures are presently not compatible with networks of trust. …

The Trust Engine is You and Me

Trust is treated as a word, not unlike leadership, that has many meanings and little force of impact. I understand trust as the glue that holds a social and organizational structure together. As a glue, it is not a single element but many required to build a tight, cohesive team.

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The trust engine in every organization is the internal network of relationships between people. These relationships may be strong or weak. They may be underdeveloped and neglected. However, by developing a network of relationships culture within your organization as this diagram shows, then you are going to find power distributed to every individual in a way where their performance engenders greater and greater of trust in the operation of the company.

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The Currency of Trust

The question of trust came up in a conversation a couple of months ago. Afterward, I sat up in the middle of the night thinking about all the places where trust is essential. Almost everything we do and every interaction we have, whether with a person or an institution, is based on either the presumption of trust or, sadly, our cynicism about it.

I can’t tell you how many people for whom I have done work on nothing more than a handshake. We trust each other to be persons of our word. This is the most basic and essential way we understand trust. It is a bond between people that transcends everything. But it is much more than that.

I went looking for public surveys about trust. I wish I hadn’t.

Trust in institutions, all institutions, regardless of the field, is declining.

Trust in leaders is declining.

People expect leaders, especially political leaders to lie, to be untrustworthy.

Even when they tell the truth, people don’t believe them.

I take this as an indictment of all of us who do leadership development. Our influence is negligible compared to the influence of money and power. We live in a time when virtuous leadership is an oxymoron. …

Respect – The Foundation of Trust

Trust is the product of respect between people.

It is based on a belief in clear, specific, core values.

Without respect for one’s self and for others, there is no integrity.

There is only the “other” who is either one to exploit for gain or to destroy as a threat from the “negative other”.

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The Search for Trust

While I’d like to see you all begin to have conversations with people about respect and trust. I believe the place to begin is with yourself. Ask yourself these questions.

Do I treat people with respect? How can I find out?

Am I a person that other people trusts? How can know this?

By asking these questions, you open yourself up to seeing how you behave with people.

If you are still unsure after asking these questions, go to someone you trust and ask them what they think.

Engaging people in conversations about the practicality of trust in your relationships will open both of you to the prospects of how to develop deeper relationships that avoid mimetic conflict and build upon positive mimetic mentoring.

When respect and trust become an aspect of your relationships, and you have found mutuality to be growing, you’ll find that many of the inner conflicts and fears that were once prominent in your life will go away.

These are steps we can take to restore our humanity in society and its institutions

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