07 Oct Trust
Trust. It is the currency of our daily life. We often don’t even think about how trust matters in the little things as well as big life decisions. We trust that someone pulling up to the stop sign will actually stop and not hit the person in the crosswalk. We trust when our neighbor says they will walk our dog as a favor to us they will do it. We trust that when we share something in confidence that it will be kept. (And we trust the airplane will actually fly…not sure how that happens!)
I heard a speaker the other day saying trust is dead. He was being provocative to make a point about AI – that we cannot trust what we are seeing in social media. I get that. And I’ll admit to being really bothered by the speed at which people seem to be willing to lie in words and pictures, with or without AI.
But as leaders, we cannot go down a path where we accept that trust is an old-fashioned notion. It doesn’t mean that we don’t verify! Or naively think that everything is roses. There are many forces at work that can erode trust. I think it means that we just need to work harder in earning trust by being trustworthy. We need to be part of a critical mass that cares about civility and respect, building trusting work places, and creating communities where people can talk to their neighbors without rancor. It means that when a problem arises, we can assume good intent of each other and work together to solve the problem. If we give up and say “trust is dead” what sort of place will we be living in?
Trust is the foundation on which we build our civil society. It takes each of us signing up to be trustworthy partners in our neighborhoods, organizations and communities. It means doing what we say we will do. Looking out for each other. Building better teams. Leadership depends on trust.
