Until not so many years ago human beings had a soul, today all of
us have a more or less unique, genetic configuration. Not to many
centuries ago cultures were led by higher define beings, today we have
air-traffic control and traffic guidance systems by satelites. The ancient
Greecs had a saying: "Know thy-self and thou shall know the world - Know
the world and thou shall know thy-self" and created a culture of harmony
and beauty. Today managementguru's preach: "Think global, act local" and
gave us multimedia, internet and lonelyness. The priests from the Past
seem to have re-incarnated as managementguru's and CEO's, each having his
own bible(s). The former magicians and astrologists are transformed in
todays webpage-wizards and marketingplanners. The paintings and sculptures
in the caves and cathedrals had to make way for screens with digitized
pictures from Jupiter, far away Galaxys and organizational charts in
head-offices. Myth's, legends and fairytails are traded in for Startrek
and Donald Duck. The search for the Holy Grale has turned into the search
for the ultimate Microchip.
Etc., etc. About everything has been de-mystified. Did it give us more
trust and confidence? In what way did it empower or perhaps depower us?
Who do we serve?
There is a strange paradox at present: our cultural , political
and economical sytems demand us to cooperate together, but it cannot be
forced upon us nor be organized totally. Collaboration demands a basic
principle of mutual TRUST. But at the same time it is apparant that
emancipation, individualisation and the urge for autonomy have increased
so much that it is more and more difficult for human beings to build up
trust-based relationships towards eachother.
Why?
I will try to share some results with you from an action-research
project I am taking part in.
First some contextual information.
As organizational consultants we are busy to reshape old sosial
structures or develop new ones.
We support our work with courses, seminars and training to make the
involved individuals "walk the talk". As well in the area of sosial
structures as in the area of human capabillities we sooner or later end up
in such a differentiation that " because of the many trees, we no longer
can see the wood". ( Sorry for the Dutch expression!!). In other words: we
get confused and lose our sense for direction. In close connection we get
the feeling of being busy with the non essential outer side of
phenomenons. That's where we ask ourselves: "Why am I doing here?"
"What's the point of being here?"
When I personally reached this point some years ago I asked
myself: Aren't there some basic theme's, out of which many different
capabillities (skills) can be empowered and also can prepare the road to
bring outdated sosial forms into development? In reflection on my own life
this question led me to the theme of TRUST. I found people with the same
question and we formed a small group of consultants that intended to do
research on this question. We went even a step further and asked
ourselves: Are there any elementary powers in the human soul, waiting to
be found, that grant our thoughts, feelings and disposition (German:
'Gesinnung') each their own focus and nature?
Many sosial-cultural (dis-)proportions, expressed in the thoughts, feelings
and attitudes of the people involved, could be led back to the working of
trust and distrust or blind trust.
We saw the germinative power of trust. We suspected that out of
trust-substance a complete new sosial reality could be built.
We studied a lot and had seminars and workshops with some of our clients
on the subject of Trust.
In our workshops we integrated different artistic workforms to approach
the theme on several (meta-)levels, we painted, sang and did
eurythmy-exercises.
We found historic personalities who had a strong impact on society in
relation to trust. and we came to a quite workable concept of trust. It
was the extensive work of Dr. Alex H. Bos that helped us getting this
issue "down to earth".
I'd like to focus here on todays cultural life; especially one
part of it: SCIENCE and add some input to the dialogue on both trust and
empowerment.
Despite the enormous succes of all kinds of scientific results for
our modern society, especially in technology and industry, a deep distrust
is gnawing at its roots. Many scientists are able - for a while - to
rationalize this feeling away, but that doesn't make it less real. This is
even more remarkable, because this same Science-creature received its own
nature out of a deep mistrust.
Francis Bacon ( 16th - 17th century) formulated the groundings for
modern science, because he was filled with a deep mistrust towards the
human being as an understanding and conceptualizing subject. He saw how
his time-companions way of thinking contained religious concepts and saw
how their perceptions were pervaded with mystic feelings. His ideal was an
objective science: to reduce all living, soul-embodied matter, to a
measurable dead substance so it could be calculated, weight, count and
mechanically explained. Its conceptual framework had to be reduced to only
what could be expressed in causal, mathematical formulas, mechanical
principles, etc. Bacon wanted to be sure that no theologic-dogmatic
content could be connected to the results. With this act the direction
onto a measurable cosmos had started. Humanity had so far lived in a
non-measurable world based on confidence in a God. This confidence was
disappearing and Bacon closed the door definitely. At the same time he
opened a gate to a world in which the moral power of trust no longer is
necesary, because everything can be calculated and therefor : 'makeable'
commandable and controlable. Calculation as replaced power for trust is
expressed in: "I count on you"; "he is not accountable for his acts"; "
This result is on your account".
What spiritual inspiror wants us to get caught in his a-moral
calculating world, without being seen himself??
About three orientations of the trust-phenomenon.
I noticed that in this LO-dialogue almost all contributions had to do with
trust in people. The word 'Confidence' is probably only used in another
context? In Dutch though, the translation for 'trust' and 'confidence' is
both times *vertrouwen*.
I take the liberty to use trust and confidence ad random in this
posting. Please correct me if this is too confusing.
Trust-crises can be defined as: 'a tension between my inner world
and outer circumstances, a tension between two poles'. Trust-crises appear
as more or less unconsious 'sensing' or are burried even deeper in the
unconscious will. When confidence-crises arise in a sosial context, it
will be necessary to talk about it. That is only possible when our
conceptualizing day-consciousness gains access to the problem-area. Our
group discovered that in this regard it is necessary to distinguish three
fundamental different orientations of trust. We (My consultancy group)
speak with our clients about:
* trust in the spirit (mind),
* trust in people and
* trust in nature.
These three basic orientations are an expression of the three-foldness of
a human being itself: he is:
* a 'natural' creature with a physical body,
* a sosial being with a soul, and he is
* a spiritual entity with a spirit (mind).
We can put trust into
* Ideas,
* persons and
* matters (things).
If we zoom in on 'putting trust upon persons', we ditinguish once more a
three foldness:
* trust in intentions,
* trust in agreements (commitment) and
* trust in capacities.
At this point I would like to remind you of Peter Druckers book:
'The practice of management' (1954) in which he among other things
imagines organizational processes as a three dimensional cross of mutual
dependencies. At the end of the chapter he makes a surprising statement:
"This dependency-cross is without the fundamental priciple of mutual
trust, not viable". Isn't it impressing when a management-consultant
states that every organisation is bearing its own cross and so revers to a
central-Christian principle: the confidence that one person puts in
another person?
Here and now I only want to explore the issue 'trust in
agreements' a bit more, because sosial life is incarnated in the
agreement.
When people talk to eachother, exchange feelings and experiences,
something sosial is going on, but still there is no form of commitment,
nor feelings of personal responsibillity. Commitment and/or
responsibillity arise from the moment talking stops and an implicit or
explicit agreement is made. From that moment on there is a connection
between individuals, an dependency (interdependency), an expectation. When
and why did we stop realizing that fact??
Sosial life in organisations is in many ways sick, because we
don't take the 'agreement-being' serious, the ease with which we for
instance 'forget' agreements, give them lower priority, give them a
personal interpretation is bewildering. We even don't take the agreements
and commitments to ourselves (intentions) serious.
For us it was surprising to discover what people - when they get good
research-questions to work with in small groups - can come up with!
Comments please!
Greetings
Winfried Deijmann
P.s. I have been a LO-list member since 1996; got (once again) lost in the
woods for a while, and couldn't resist the temptation of this trust and
empowerment thread . If you are interested you can find somewhere in the
LO-archives my introductionary words.
[Host's Note: Winfried, good to hear from you. Your intro is at
http://www.learning-org.com/97.10/0230.html
...Rick]
--Winfried M. Deijmann - Deijmann & Partners - Zutphen - The Netherlands Artists, Consultants and Facilitators for Organizational Learning, Leadership and Action Learning Events Het Zwanevlot 37, NL 7206 CB Zutphen, The Netherlands <Winfried@universal.nl> Phone: +31-(0)575-522076 mobile: +31-(0)54 94 71 27 Homepage: http://www.universal.nl/users/winfried/pinforma.html
"An educated mind is useless without a focussed will and dangerous without a loving heart" (unknown source)
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>