Leadnow GmbH

Definitions and background

There are two kinds of trust. Interpersonal trust is a feeling towards a person as to whether you can rely on them. The feeling is fuelled by knowledge of human nature and shared experiences. People who have helped us even though we were vulnerable and could have taken advantage of this, such people typically rise on our trust scale.

System trust is an advance trust that is placed in an organisation. It is highly dependent on the corporate culture. In a company with a high culture of trust, it's easy to leave your keys and wallet on your desk, even if you don't know all the employees personally. 

Tasks in group

Discuss these two questions first in pairs, then in the whole group:

• What type of confidence are you personally? Do you have to earn your trust or do you give advance trust?
• What kind of systemic trust is there in your organisation?
• What would help to strengthen your personal and system confidence?

Transition: Those who want trust give feedback

A very important factor for trust is transparency and openness. It sounds so simple, but it is very challenging. After all, transparency means that I am relentless in exposing my own point of view to my vis-à-vis. This is easy with positive and joyful things (praise, good news, etc.…). However, trust is only strengthened if we do the same for difficult things (criticism, mistakes, weaknesses, etc.…).

Why? Trust means - I know where I stand with the other person. I know that when we talk openly about joyful and difficult things.

I would go one step further and say: appreciation means relentlessly confronting your counterpart with joyful and difficult realities.