Which wolf will win? Trust at work.
I recently attended a party and was chatting with some new acquaintances about their experiences at work and we got onto the topic of trust. I was taken back to hear that they believed that humans are untrustworthy and go about protecting themselves from others ‘doing them over’. Now I am not naive enough to believe that we live in a world of rainbows and unicorns. I get deceitful stuff happens. However, I do believe that most people are trustworthy and that we would be better off designing work based on this assumption.
Back when I was a manager in the corporate world the belief that humans are trustworthy was core to how I operated. An example played out when new team members asked me for time off. My response would be "I don’t care if you are at home, the beach, or Timbuktu as long as the work gets done you decide.” I trusted them to get the job done when, where and how they chose to do it. I have no doubt that this trusting approach was correlated to our team’s healthy high performance. I know it led to commitment and discretionary effort. And do you know what? I can’t remember a time when anyone “did me over.”
This experience got me wondering about the way we frame trust and reminded me of a parable from the book Humankind by Rutger Bregman:
An old man says to his grandson: ‘There’s a fight going on inside me. It’s a terrible fight between two wolves. One is evil – angry, greedy, jealous, arrogant and cowardly. The other is good – peaceful, loving, modest, generous, honest and trustworthy. These two wolves are also fighting with you and inside every other person too.”
After a moment the boy asks, “Which wolf will win?”
The old man smiles.
“The one you feed.”
What I take away from this is our perspective matters. That how we frame humans as trustworthy or not makes a difference. Now I know it is not always going to be peaches and cream. For argument’s sake say 10% of people “did us over.” Is this such a big cost? Or is this just a cost of having a life worth living?
You might be thinking “people break the rules in organisations all the time proving their untrustworthiness.” Maybe so, but I challenge that it might down to the ridiculous policies some organisations have that make it near impossible to get anything done without breaking the rules. I know of some organisations where you can hardly order a pencil sharpener without three levels of hierarchical approval. Do we really need so many policies that are subliminally messaging that people are not trusted? Another example I have observed is when senior managers make decisions about how to run the business without engaging with the employees doing the work. I have seen firsthand people ignore instructions coming down from top management to make sure the business keeps delivering value. Is this untrustworthy or an act of bravery and integrity?
In closing I return to the parable and turn to you to reflect on which wolf you are feeding when it comes to trust? Are you like me and believe that others are trustworthy? Or do you think people should come with an anti-trust warning label? I would love you to join the conversation in the comments.
