Trust.md

# Trust Tension ## Truth <--> Safety The Trust Tension optimizes the energies between safety and truth. We build trust with each other when we feel safe enough to risk truth telling; when we feel safe enough to take a hard look at ourselves and accept the gift of our community’s feedback; when we are held accountable without feeling judged; when we stretch to remain in integrity with ourselves and our shared agreements; when we strive to be impeccable with our words. Communication and negotiation among groups of people is difficult. The more honest we are with each other, the easier it will be for us to trust one another and work together as a team. Openness and honesty are critical to our success, and we strive to share our honest truth with care. In working together, we are animated by: ## Truth * Courage * Transparency * Continuous Feedback * Openness ## Safety * Kindness * Appreciation * Vulnerability * Privacy ## Look and Feel ### A genuine love for and pursuit of truth We deliberately remove obstacles to truth telling. We welcome mistakes as long as there is authentic and vulnerable reflection as well as personal responsibility. We are 100% transparent to each other and our stakeholders, and as open as we can be to the public without compromising our purpose \(for example, we might choose to keep a certain expansion plan private from the public in order to maintain a competitive advantage in a new market\). Transparency may seem like a passive process, like "don’t hide anything," but it’s actually a big challenge to keep everyone up to date and on the same page about stuff they’re not working on on a daily basis. These are some of the agreements we use to make information more accessible, but our work is ongoing. ### Member-to-Member Feedback Feedback given from one member to another is private unless the member receiving the feedback wishes to share. Giving and receiving feedback is an integral part of learning at Learners Guild. We acknowledge that in order for us all to continuously grow, we need to be able to give and receive feedback on things that push the edges of our comfort zones. Feedback is vulnerable and thus should be respectful and private. Members are, of course, encouraged to share as much of their _received_ feedback as they wish, whether to seek support or to stay in integrity. ### Private Information: When and why information should be private Choose to make information private if: * making it transparent could damage the purpose of the organization * you do not own the information and do not have the owner's explicit permission to make it transparent * the information directly concerns another person and you do not have their explicit permission to make it transparent ### Closing the Gaps In a typical organization, individuals expend enormous energy protecting themselves. People hide parts of themselves, avoid conflict, unwittingly sabotage change efforts, and subtly enforce a separation between “the me at work” and the “real me”. The consequences are all too common, and all too familiar: more stress and turnover, office politics and gossip, less engagement and collaboration, and ultimately worse outcomes. “Gaps” in this sense, are most often defined by the conversations we’re not having, the things we’re not discussing, the synchronicities with others that we are not achieving, and the work that, because of some self-protective fear, we are avoiding.1 #### Gaps may arise between: * what we do and what we say * what we feel and what we say * the water cooler conversation and the meeting room conversation * the real-time occasion of performance and the feedback on performance * knowledge of our principles and the application of those principles * observations perceived and feedback given * unacknowledged power dynamics * unresolved interpersonal tensions * what is discussed at a board or 'executive' level and what is shared with staff We acknowledge that these gaps exist, and we are dedicated to closing them. The existence of these gaps as a prime hindrance to our collective effectiveness and even learning in the specific. We work to create easily learnable methods that help individuals communicate in ways that don’t arouse defensive reactions in others, and that enable individuals to receive and integrate feedback.2 --- 1 Source: [The Deliberately Developmental Organization](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54541a13e4b0331fc2f2a0f7/t/550b6b72e4b0ff02510e1594/1426811762075/W2G+What+is+a+DDO+Sept+2013+Copyrighted.pdf) 2 Source: Overcoming Organizational Defenses: Facilitating Organizational Learning by Chris Argyris \(Prentice Hall: 1990\)