I enjoyed John Hagel’s latest post Resolving the Trust Paradox. I do think paradoxes are interesting; shifting perspective to paradox from contradiction often seems to open up new possibilities.
I think I broadly agree with John that the way organisations can build trust is shifting away from claiming status and authority towards showing vulnerability. I noticed a while back that it used to be that videos with high production values conferred status, whereas in recent years, we might be more trusting of something rougher and (possibly) more authentic. But there are loads of exceptions and context, as usual, is king.
I’m going to reflect further on what John says about passion – the gist of which seems to be that passion has some causal relationship with trust. I’m a bit wary of the whole passion meme, I often squirm at being asked what I’m passionate about, and I’m not convinced vehement people ooze trustworthiness.
On the whole, I think the direct pursuit of trust can be a mistake; it’s probably more something that emerges from the messy business of collaboration.
