A Culture of Trust
Susan Duggan
A Culture of Trust by Dawa Tarchin Phillips
You live in a time of important changes in leadership understanding, skill and capacity. Don’t just take my word for it.
In our ongoing work with individuals and organizations, a recurring phenomenon and differentiator in organizational health and resilience is the presence or absence of Trust. An intangible quality that can make or break a team, and that can single handedly sabotage your efforts at success.
Why is Trust an elephant in the room people struggle to talk about? Why does talking about Trust provoke such observed strong responses in leadership settings, anywhere from enthusiastic, silent nodding in the back of the room to a visible, physical cringe in the front row seats?
This article seeks to explore the topic of Trust, its power and potential, and its successful practice in greater detail; all within the context of your effective leadership.
Facing the reality of uncertainty and change
What immediately stands out to the careful observer is the obvious dichotomy between your general desire and need for Trust and the undeniable reality of uncertainty and change. If your world is inherently unpredictable and changing, if it provides constant challenge and carries varying degrees of danger and risk, what then is the intelligent and realistic approach to Trust? This is an important question to consider. If considered thoroughly, it can lead you to unleash your organization’s potential to great new heights.
Two approaches to Trust
There are two very different approaches to Trust: The general approach to Trust, the one observed most frequently in people and organizations when asked, is that Trust is earned. Trust is your reaction or response to the degree of safety and support perceived from and in the world around you. “Make it safe for me, and I will trust you.”
We call this common approach Trust as earned.
It is based on you having observed, often over a prolonged period of time, that the people and the conditions in your environment display a strong degree of predictability.
Although the most common, the problem with this approach to Trust is that it can easily lead to infinite regressions thereby stifling progress. Your environment, be it people or planet, is never quite safe and predictable enough to warrant your reaction or response of Trust as earned. And, once Trust is lost, it can seem impossible to re- establish unless people or environment undergo often-unrealistic transformation.
Since the perception of safety and predictability is the prerequisite for your reaction or response of Trust as earned, Trust levels remain low and the organization or the individual functions on a low risk/low reward setting, seeking mainly self-preservation through the act of ongoing self-protection. The access to the human potential is and remains restricted. An opportunity for advantage and organizational excellence is lost.
Let’s look at another, more desirable approach. An approach a lot more courageous and a lot more suitable for the reality of the world we live in today.
We call it Trust as an investment.
When you view Trust as an investment, as an inner resource you are free to cultivate consciously and in unlimited quantities if you so decide and choose, you are beginning to free Trust from its cognitive bias and emotional constraints.
The reality of uncertainty and change is not going away anytime soon. You can resolve to invest Trust because you understand and value its properties as a human quality in your life and in your organization.
Albert Einstein said, “The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.”
When you resolve to invest Trust you affirm the conviction that the universe is friendly. Not because it is safe, secure or predictable, but because it has endowed you with the inner resources to thrive in a risky and uncertain environment with composure and clarity.
Interesting things begin to happen
When you choose to invest Trust, interesting things begin to happen.
First, you begin to worry less. It is an old Himalayan saying that “if you can change something, no need to worry; if you cannot change something, no need to worry!” Worry, your general human response to uncertainty and change with a lack of Trust, comes at a cost. It consumes your inner resources and destabilizes your composure almost instantaneously. What you may not realize is that your worry is based on imagination. And usually, when you begin to worry, your initial internal monologue begins with “What if...?”
At Empowerment Holdings, we call this the “What if...?”-Red flag. Everything that comes after the “What if...?”-Statement is by nature pure imagination. For example, “What if I make a fool of myself?”, “What if I lose my credibility?”, “What if I lose my job!”
Although you are only imagining outcomes, it does not mean this type of thinking is without effect.
If what follows in your imagination is the repeated dwelling on the worst-case scenario, your body will exhibit the typical stress response. This means it will release adrenalin and cortisol in large quantities, restrict your blood flow, increase your blood pressure, increase your heart rate, slow down your digestion and reallocate resources to an anticipated fight or flight response. If allowed to continue daily and over prolonged periods of time, the costs of such worry and stress on individuals and organizations are estimated to be in the billions. Allowing your mind to dwell for prolonged periods of time on the imagination of the worst-case scenario, and that the universe might turn out to be hostile after all, has created a physical and psychological liability on your entire system.
There are options
Let’s examine the second scenario.
If after the “What if...?”-Red flag you actually choose to imagine things going well and working out to your and other’s ultimate benefit and satisfaction, your body will begin to relax and open up. You will begin to feel at ease in your skin and psyche and your physiology will function as normal, if not better.
It’s not that anything really changed. Uncertainty is still present. You do not yet know what will actually happen. But by choosing to invest Trust, and by cutting through the reactivity of the worrying mind, you have now reduced the cost on your body and mind, have increased your openness and relaxation, and have maintained access to your mental, physical, emotional and spiritual resources. If you can do this on an organizational scale, imagine the benefits and impact on productivity.
The benefits are multifold
If you choose to invest Trust in this way something else begins to happen: You will begin to feel less resentful.
As long as you choose to practice Trust as earned, merely as a reaction or response and not as an investment, you will resent others for not giving you the sense of certainty, predictability and control you crave. Failing to experience the openness, relaxation and resourcefulness you desire, you will blame people and your organization for your contracted state and the taxing experience of your continual stress and worry.
If you choose to invest Trust you will also begin to fear less. While risk is real, fear is a choice.
Fearlessness is the natural outcome of not allowing your mind to dwell on negative “What if...?” scenarios. And, a mind that is not dwelling on negative “What if...?” scenarios, will progressively give rise to confidence and resilience.
We are not suggesting here that it is not important to properly assess your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. That is important and you should do it with clarity and acuity, unflinchingly and without filter. But once you have done your assessment, it is done. When choosing where to dwell after your assessment, Trust - not mistrust, is the obvious choice. Because it increases your resilience, reduces your stress response and opens you up to the full access of your inner resources.
Once you begin to experience first hand the changes that occur from practicing Trust as an investment and “What if...?” as a red flag to be directed - not abdicated to, you will realize the power that is unleashed from making this small but vital change in your perspective and cognitive behavior. And like any good system, it too begins to build on itself. As you invest more Trust you begin to experience more Trust, as you begin to experience more Trust, you will have more Trust to invest. Sounds like something you know?
Well, to quote the admired and famed Einstein once more, “Compounding interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it... he who doesn’t... pays it.”
Just think what, applied to your investment of Trust into your life and organization, this little wonder of the world can do for your career, human resources and productivity. As an approach to leadership it remains cutting edge and we trust you will not let this chance pass you by.
© by Dawa Tarchin Phillips for Empowerment Holdings, LLC published on November 23, 2015