Over the years, I’ve read – and thought – a lot about trust. More recently, I’ve been collecting quotes about trust, in preparation for writing this article. (Side note: for me, a good quote is a distillation of a concept – a concentrated concept, so to speak – and as such is useful for fine-tuning understanding.)
It’s easy to agree that trust is essential for leadership in any context – workplace, community, family, and, yes, government.
But what does that actually mean?
Let’s start here: unconditional trust, in my opinion, doesn’t exist. I can trust the guy who cuts my hair to do a good job cutting my hair, but there’s no way I trust him to clean my teeth or prescribe medication.
I can trust my boss to understand the company’s strategy and what needs to happen to succeed, but there’s no way I trust her to, well, cut my hair!
And we can take that to personal relationships – friendships, partnerships, and marriages. We all know that the people we care deeply about, the people we love, have their faults and failings that we need to learn to accept, or things that we just know not to ask for. And that can be as simple as knowing that “Sam Smith” can’t be trusted to be on time, and “Jane Doe” won’t empty the dishwasher.
So trust has parameters around what we trust someone to do, be, or represent.
That said, as leaders we need to trust our teams to … well, what?
Some would say, it’s about trusting they’ll simply do what they’re told.
But isn’t that more like not trusting them? Not trusting them to push back when needed, to raise issues when necessary?
I unfortunately didn’t capture the source of this, but one comment I noted is that high trust is not the same as high comfort – it’s not the pastel, sweet, nobody’s-feathers-get-ruffled version of psychological safety. (For more thoughts on how the concept of psychological safety is often misused, see here.)
Instead, high trust allows teams to get into the weeds with issues, challenge each other, dig deep, discuss and debate solutions. (I’m using “teams” to represent any group of people that must collectively work to make decisions or generally get stuff done, including community organizations, families, and so on.)
This requires – let me emphasize that: requires – mutual respect.
Trust requires respect.
Rachel Botsman, a leading thinker and writer on trust, says, “Trust isn’t about transparency, but about integrity and reliability.” If we trust that someone is being honest and consistent in their behavior, then we don’t necessarily need full disclosure. Which is a good thing, because often within organizations, at least, full disclosure – full transparency – isn’t possible (confidentiality issues) or even desireable (too many details create overwhelm and confusion).
Psychotherapist Esther Perel, whose work with couples, sexuality, and relationships (workplace and personal) obviously deals with all kinds of issues around trust. She says, “Trust is an active engagement with the unknown.”
I hesitate to disagree with someone with her expertise, but I will nonetheless rephrase that: Trust is the ability to actively engage with the unknown.
Because if we don’t trust the people we’re with – or, for that matter, if we don’t trust ourselves – how can we possibly engage with the unknown?
And that, then, is what it comes down to: a belief that the person or people we’re with – whether that’s our workplace team, our community, friends, family, leadership at all levels (looking at you, current U.S. administration) – are ready, willing, and able to support us and be supported as we “engage with the unknown” that is the future – the future at any level, family, community, team, company, and country.
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash