How Can We Be Truer to Each Other?
Reflections on the immense power of trust and shared values, and their crucial role in our shared being and becoming
Hello Dear,
Truth. Being true to oneself. This is one of the key ideas which come to my mind, as I sit down to type in my thoughts with you today. Incidentally, if you read the previous post, you would recall that we began that post with quite similar thoughts. You can check out those ruminations below.
If we can pause to think of it, we would realize - or it should be obvious to us - that truth is fundamental to our lives. Isn’t it? All our relationships are based on an implicit equation of trust. This is true for our interpersonal relationships - with our family, friends, colleagues, and other people in our lives. It applies also for our relationships with a plethora of organizations with which we transact, relate or are a part of. This includes the organizations we work in or work for or work at or work with [interesting question: which of these prepositions do you use to describe your relationship with your work organization? Or maybe you do not even refer to it as “work”?]. The trust equation holds good for the various organizations with which we transact or relate, from whom we buy a variety of products and services, the banks or other places where we hold our money or make our investments. Very importantly, this trust is required for the relationship between the citizens and the state as well, and indeed, among citizens too. Indeed, it is also important among nations, among peoples (and not just among people) and among members of the global society and humanity as a whole.
Now, when we say that trust is necessary, an immediate point comes to our mind. The reality is more complex and nuanced than what is explained in the previous paragraph.
Not all our relationships are based on implicit trust. There are degrees of trust. In many social situations, we have understood that we can make do with a certain degree of distrust. That is, it might be the case all that we want is a minimum threshold of trust, where the threshold varies depending on each situation.
Or maybe this needs to be further refined. In some situations, we may really be concerned with the harm which can be caused in a situation of low trust, and not with the level of trust per se. So, if the relationship really does not matter to us much, i.e., if the relationship is primarily a transactional relationship, we might be fine with a level of trust, which is low but nevertheless does not expose us to undue harm. An example of this could be our relationship with our telecom service provider.
If the relationship is not transactional, however, then, the level of trust itself might be the principal point which matters to us, not the harm which can result due to a trust deficit. In other words, in such a relationship, trust itself is much more foundational to the relationship, it is a key constitutve part of the relationship; it matters, irrespective of any other harm which can be caused due to a potential trust deficit.
On a slightly different note:
One big strength and weakness of trust seems to be this: trust itself removes the need for checking whether trust is present or not.
The positive power of trust is that it is a big lubricant, it makes processes and relationships frictionless, it makes a lot of “the system of checks and balances” unnecessary, even a tremendous waste of time and energy. In fact, performing such checks could even be counterproductive and can upset the trust equation, since the very act of performing such checks could be taken as a signal of a trust deficit.
In other words:
The positive power of trust is that it frees us to focus on growing the good, rather than on guarding against the bad.
Here is a small piece of reflection which I have written on similar lines.
[Beginning of a piece of reflection I wrote in March 2023]
The Beauty of the Invisible
Good poets write what you think; great poets sing what you knew but did not know how to express...
A loving partner knows the meaning of every word you say; a great partner knows your thoughts even before, even if you do not, utter them...
A good listener hears what you say; a great listener hears the unsaid, the unarticulated fears, the heartwrenching pains, the latent desires, the secret ambitions and aspirations we are too shy to express or even tell ourselves…
A good friend accepts you as you are; a great friend liberates you even more to be and become the as-yet invisible and unknown best version of you you can be!…
#LookingBeyond #NotJust Senses
[End of piece of reflection I wrote in March 2023]
Speaking about invisibility, it now strikes me that we can perhaps express the positive power of trust in this way:
Trust makes trust invisible. To be more precise, a state of trust makes the need for trust invisible. Thus, the beauty of trust is that it makes itself unnecessary.
Speaking about which, I cannot help but be reminded about the role of invisibility in communication, especially in government communication or public communication, given my belongingness to the Indian Information Service (more on IIS here). In the following post, we have introduced the concept of what I call non-names for IIS.
One of the many such alternate names I have thought of for IIS is Indian Invisible Service, inspired by the following thought (or insight, if you think it has some value):
The goal of communication might very well be to make communication unnecessary. To make it invisible. To make it so natural as to be not noticeable or observable.
We will explore these threads later [yes, I think this is something which always happens to me: the coexistence and co-emergence of multiple never-ending threads of ideas, some of which might very well appear to be digressions or diversions from preceding threads; I hope you are able to bear with me on this. Come to think of it, this is how our conversations are and tend to be by nature, isn’t it?]
Well, this is about the positive power, the strength, of trust. What about its negative power? Can it be a weakness as well? Indeed, we can say that trusting is an act of allowing oneself to be vulnerable. Whenever we trust, we can be said to be exposing ourselves to the danger of being betrayed of our trust. In this sense, there is a real danger here, since there are many bad actors in the world, right? These malicious actors include individuals, institutions and very interestingly, entire belief systems! [That women are meant to stay at home and take care of domestic work is one example of such a belief system. We can think of numerous others.]
So, there are bad actors alright; I think we need to acknowledge that there is a bad actor in each one of us as well. Isn’t there? We too are frail human beings, with our own package of fallibilities, aren’t we? I think it is a question we need to ask always: are we acting in accordance with the trust others have reposed in us? Here, others could include not just the people in our lives, but Nature, Our Creator (based on your belief systems), and indeed, we ourselves. This reminds me of what the great physicist Richard P. Feynman has said about we fooling ourselves.
This in a sense brings us back to where we began this post; about the importance of being true to oneself. And wow, it is a singular delight to get back home, isn’t it? I am happy to share with you that somehow, despite the many digressions and diversions, very often, I am somehow providentially guided back to the starting point. I think it is a great matter of joy for the writer to be able to so get back to where he or she began, just like it is for a traveller. And I hope it is so for you dear reader too? 😊 I am thinking that this is a simple thing of beauty.
Ok, so talking about being true to oneself, we can see that truth depends on trust and trust depends on truth.
For us to be able to be true to ourselves, we should be able to trust our inner voice. And to be able to trust our inner voice, we should be able to be true to ourselves.
And crucially, our reflections on trust remind us that trust is something which we need to build, create and nurture, much like a plant which needs a regular supply of water, sunlight and minerals.
With this, let me now share a piece of reflection - a Twitter thread in fact - which I wrote on New Year Day of year 2022.
[Beginning of a piece of reflection I had written on January 1, 2022]
Dear Twitterati, I believe 2021 has been for most of us a year which challenged us and hence drove us to grow and rediscover ourselves in new ways. Sharing some of my reflections as we seek to be and do good and better in 2022.
ON LIVING OUR VALUES
Do values matter? Why? I think they are the most important - more important than other competencies / attributes such as skills, knowledge, abilities & connections. Here's why I think this is so...
1) The values we hold and live by define and express who we are, who we seek to be and become. In other words, they are an essential part of our very identity.
2a) Great enduring relationships are born and made on the strength of a foundation of shared values. Hence, any group of people seeking to live or grow or accomplish something together needs to have a set of values they share, which bind them despite their differences.
2b) A set of shared values is hence important to the growth and survival of communities of various kinds such as nations, families as well as work organizations, and indeed for humanity as a whole.
3a) What makes values so important is because of what they embody. Since they reflect the very essence of who we are, a failure to live by them can change not just how others perceive us, it also does change we ourselves.
When we fail to live by our values, in our own eyes, we become someone who is now ok with breaking our own moral and ethical code. This puts us on the slippery slope, where we tend to keep making such breaches again and again.
3b) This can be particularly dangerous, not just for individuals, but also for professional groups such as organizations. Organizations that fail to live by their values can find themselves in a vicious cycle - how?
When organization members do not live by the organization's values, it lowers / dilutes moral standards, corrupts organizational identity and affects the magnetic strength of the values which holds the organization together - it sends the organization on a path of decay.
3c) What makes this more dangerous - and values all the more crucial - is that great shared values are hard to form and build, and relatively easy to dilute and destroy. So, the more they are broken, the more difficult rebuilding them is bound to be!
3d) At the same time, I believe:
More than anything else, it is the values we honour & live by which hold the power to inspire individuals and groups of people to be and become great, to do wonderful things which Change The World. As Simon Sinek says, we must Start with Why.
4) Another reason why values are so important is that whether or not we speak about them, they do get expressed in the smallest of our words and actions, and in the hundreds of "moments of truth" an organization faces in interactions with its stakeholders.
So values are important. It is hence important that everyone of us does what each of us can in order to cherish, uphold, nurture and cultivate the values we want ourselves and our communities to honour and live by. We need a conscious effort, we shouldn't leave it to chance.
That everyone needs to do this needs emphasis, especially since people in large organizations / groups tend to / are conditioned to assume / believe that they hold no real power or responsibility. We tend to get content with doing what is told, without asking questions.
The truth however is that everyone in a community / organization enjoys both power and responsibility - even if some high and some low - for shaping its future. Yes, each of us have a voice and an influence, and I'd think it is both our duty and our right to exercise it.
Part of this power and responsibility is the ability to understand, reflect and discover - both on one's own and together with other members of the community - whether we are really doing the right thing, or just doing wrong things right (or doing wrong things wrong!)
The culture of groups is not static, it evolves. And responsible reflections and inquiries by organization / community members is one crucial means which can help clarify and shape the culture and values of the community - it can make a life-and-death difference!
But just reflection and inquiry are not enough, once we come to an assessment of the values embodied in the decisions and policies being pursued by the organization, we should of course be able and willing to stand up for our values, for what we believe in.
Howsoever small or lowly we may be in the larger scheme of things, standing up for our values and beliefs is no doubt a powerful act, which has the potential to create ripples of change. And in any case, we should do it simply because it is the right thing to do.
If we don't, our organizations will lose their virginity due to normalization of deviance and groupthink, as this “The Atlantic” article explains. Let's remember:
Who you are is defined by the values you are willing to struggle for - Mark Manson
[End of the piece of reflection I had written on January 1, 2022, Read this on Twitter here]
So there we go…but before we go, as per our practice and my commitment, here is the book recommendation for today: How Will You Measure Your Life?, a 2012 book by late innovation researcher Clayton M Christensen (famous for the theory and concept of disruptive innovation) and co-authors James Allworth and Karen Dillon. [You would notice that we have referred to one of his quotes above. And yes, I read this book in 2012 itself, the year it got published; I happened to write a brief review too, during the Foundation Course, the very first phase of my induction into the Indian Civil Service].
Fine then, so let us stop here? Hope this post has been of some value to you. I would be happy to hear from you, either in the comments section or at my email newdheep@gmail.com. Thank you very much! - Dheep.