Every time there is a gap in information you’re forced to choose between trust and suspicion.*
Choose to trust by default.
Trust usually works in most situations. Think of how we often get new information later on to explain what was going on. Misunderstandings and poor communication are the gasoline engine for a considerable fraction of conflict, hurt feelings, and (frankly) dis-engagement.
Choosing to trust is much easier on your psyche and emotional engine. Trust conquers the kind of fretting which burns away energy without producing anything useful. Choose charitable and optimistic explanations of gaps instead of allowing your imagination to flood your synapses with disaster scenarios.
Perhaps most important for leaders: Believing the best about your team brings out the best from your team members.
Choosing to trust by default means you’ll get burned occasionally. Our world gives us many reasons to be cynical. Thus the honored strategy of “trust and verify.”
There are people who by words and behaviors you will trust little or not at all. Redemption in these cases is expensive.
There are new-to-you or new-to-this-role people whom you can give a default level of starting trust, and they’ll earn more over time.
There’s a continuum of trust right up to “trust with my life.”
When (not if) you are burned, purposefully translate any hurt into a lesson for the future. Acknowledge hurt and disappointment, but don’t hold on to bitterness for one second longer than necessary to get past it.
*Andy Stanley is the modern writer I’ve read expressing this truth, but the concept appears in the writings of Cicero, Erasmus, and Machiavelli, too. People are still people, which means these principles work over long periods of time.
HT: I’ve learned a great deal about this topic from my own mentors and the writing of Cary Nieuwhof, Henry Cloud, and Richard Foster.
