hello, Winfried--
I'll respond with the trepidation of one who's about to enter deep waters.
Truthfully, I enjoyed your contribution on Trust & Empowerment, but didn't
feel a need to comment. I don't necessarily share all of your
perspectives or ideas, as you stated them, but I found them to be
well-grounded in your own experience (therefore valid).
Trust can be defined as "the confident expectation of something; hope." I
used the Pauline definition of faith as, "the substance of things hoped
for, the evidence of things not seen." There is only the shade of a
difference, isn't there.
Your posting, though, triggered my thoughts concerning the crisis of
transition that much of the world is undergoing, but very specifically the
Western and the Christian world. In this, we share the skepticism of the
Greeks (which is the genesis of scientific thought) that you ascribed to
Francis Bacon. Bacon also lived at a time of crisis in transition. One
of the characteristics of historical transitions and their subsequent
crises, according to Ortega y Gasset, is that the past is no longer
relevant to the future. Another characteristic is that we suffer, as
Cicero did, from "...the desperate state of understanding." By knowing
too much, especially things that seem counter to our common history
(church, nation, science, faith) we lose our way.
Ortega y Gasset reminds us of this (in a long quote here) that:
"Life is an operation directed toward the future. From the beginning we
live toward the future, and are aimed toward it. But the future is in its
very essence a problematic thing; we cannot put down a footing in it, it
has neither a determined shape nor a definite profile. How can it, if it
does not yet exist? The future is always pluralistic, it consists of all
those things that can occur. And many different things can happen,
including some that are completely contradictory. Hence the paradoxical
condition, essential to our lives, that man has no way of orientating
himself in the future except to reflect on what the past has been, the
past whose form is unequivocally fixed and unchangeable."
Trust -- the kind of spiritual trust between man and God that you describe
-- is a particularly Western point of view. That's why I view this as a
Western crisis (not to say that other cultures aren't facing their own
crises--but they are not connected necessarily to this discussion). Trust
-- the kind of trust that binds communities and extended families and
organizations -- is also a victim, as you point out, of this
"trust-crisis." The trust crisis exists because the past has been largely
irrelevant to the future for the past two centuries! Trust (and faith)
are victims of change (revolutionary, traumatic, terrible waves of
change).
So, what is being done nowadays in organizations and our communities to
counter this crisis? I think that this was one of the primary motives
that took David Bohm into advocating dialog (finding shared meaning).
This is a method for developing relationships (integrity based on trust).
Of the 5 disciplines in Senge's work, 4 of them have something to do with
connecting people (growing trust). It's not only Drucker, who you quote,
but just about every writer on leadership, management, organizational
development and behavior mentions the lack of trust as a significant
barrier to developing and sustaining a good organization.
The problem continues to be that the past makes us skeptical of the
future. The past includes ongoing management-labor disputes; the tension
between "conservatives" and "progressives" or "liberals" in our political
structures; and the deteriorating loss of "hope" for a good
(materialistic?) life for so many of young people. Each of us has a past
that defines the future that we see -- and we know how our mental models
and biases can color both the past and the future.
I think that your work and experiments are wonderful. I also know that
trust requires continuing attention; steadfast integrity and the
expectation that tomorrow our relationship will be very much like it was
yesterday. I suppose you'll notice that I've avoided writing about
"empowerment." I've written enough on this list about that subject, I
think.
I've spent many a fall day on the coast of Holland, either fishing or
walking along one of the beaches. It's a gorgeous time of the year to be
alive there. Greetings to you from Astoria, Oregon!
walk in peace,
Doc Holloway
-- "With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony and the deep power of joy, we see into the heart of things." -William WordsworthThresholds <http://www.thresholds.com> Meeting Masters <http://www.thresholds.com/masters.html> Richard C. "Doc" Holloway Astoria, Or & Olympia, WA USA ICQ# 10849650 voice 360.786.0925
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>