Implementing Trust

We are in the final stages of working with a multidisciplinary research team at the Technical University of Twente in Enschede. Together we are constructing a tool for assessing the value of a collaborative network and its potential to innovate. Enschede is a small provincial town near the German border and actually the place of my birth. Every time we make the trip to meet the students and discuss the progress of the research, something marvelous happens. We reap the benefits of what we created at the very start of their research assignment. Both as a group and as individuals these students have surprised us with their commitment and creativity and impressed us with their ability to collaborate and constructively engage challenges. Even working on Christmas day to reach a dead line.

At our very first meeting we did something we call Socratic Discourse. In a Socratic Discourse we try to have a dialogue on the essence rather than the appearance of whatever subject we choose to treat. A Socratic Discourse about collaboration therefore involves a discussion on personal drives, goals and values. It seeks to achieve mutual understanding of the existing diversity in a group. A diversity that we believe is essential for innovation. Our idea was that such an understanding would help build trust and provide the basis for our kind of collaboration; mutual respect. We were right; apparently even more so then we initially thought.

Building trust is a crucial aspect of any collaborative process, we believe it needs to start as soon as people get together to set themselves to a new task. Being homo sapiens we consider ourselves quite the rational beings, we are, but it is not our primary state. This becomes clear with an issue like trust. You invoke a whole array of subtle and diverse mechanisms for gathering information about what your partners in a dialogue are doing and more importantly why they are doing it. Does what he is saying match what he is doing, do his eyes match his stance, does the timbre of her voice match the importance of her message, is he fidgeting while he is talking, does she dare look me in the eye, etc., etc. So many of these messages are non-verbal, yet we have very fine tuned subconscious mechanisms to discern them, use them in our interaction and use them to decide whether to trust someone or not, without conscious thought and in a split second. Whether we are aware of it or not, our actions are driven by implicit believes, preferences and mechanisms that seemingly have a history and logic of their own. Talking about these believes and seeing them reflected in the eyes and words of others produces a great deal of knowledge of self and provides a greater understanding and respect between the members of a group. It is akin to the process that happens when therapy sessions are successful.

At Crossing Signals we start with the idea that trust is a function of the transparency of our goals (what we want) and our motives (why we want it). This transparency of goals and motives is what we achieve in a Socratic Discourse. We create an open atmosphere by setting the example: showing, not telling, people that it is alright to be vulnerable. We make room for reflection on what each of us contributes. What is there to learn? What is valuable about what you hear the other person saying? What do you recognize? What differences do you experience? How far are you willing to go for the other?

What encourages people to drop their natural defences and open up like this? Trust and reflection! They are a reward in themselves; there is an immediate intangible benefit that comes with reflection and trust. Reflection, gaining greater insight into oneself, is a valuable thing, we instinctively recognize this. The same goes for trust. Operating in an environment of trust is fulfilling, it makes us happy. In addressing fundamental questions in an open atmosphere and by creating space for reflection and acceptance, we have created a way to implement trust. The quality of the relationships between the group members and the collaboration between them are a direct result of this trust. They trust each other, we trust them and they trust us. This reality has created a tremendous amount of value in terms of creativity and results, not to mention the personal growth each member has experienced on many levels during our time together.