The challenge of trust

I met Shanti last year at the Picnic seminar in Amsterdam. The discussion we had has been in my mind whole autumn. Christmas and new years felt like the perfect time to get back to it. During that evening, at Picnic, we accidentally ended up in the same dinner table under heart-shaped balloons and the text “What are you bringing?” written with light bulbs. Through the dinner we talked about helping people to utililize their whole capability.

In many job positions people are dealing with challenging targets, and the landscape around them alters all the time. They have too much information and too little perspective. And therefore the everyday challenges, especially in doing new things, can start to feel threatening. The worst case scenario is that people therefore get in denial about changes and new challenges, and organizations start to malfunction.

The only way for us to help each other survive and to even flourish there is that we encourage each other to use our whole scale of whatever skills and insight. It is about dealing with the challenges through trial and error. As leaders or directors we have to give people room to act upon their understanding and even remove obstacles from their way (instead of making them). As colleagues, we have to try to understand each other’s goals and to contribute to those in a constructive, value-adding way (instead of thinking about our own goals only).

This is not done easily, because it needs trust: trust on other people’s skills, and trust on our own instincts and questioning. It also needs sensitivity for the values that are behind other people’s actions. The hardest thing is that it requires us to be sharp-eyed towards our own aims: Am I resisting that suggestion because it think it is genuinely wrong? Or am I resisting it because it feels scary because I would need to change something?

This is a tough challenge, but I think we could try harder in order to be successful in whatever we do. Therefore it feels encouraging that there are more and more people around the world in the business of empowering people.

Karoliina Luoto
Leading expert, web development
Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund