Trafficking In Trust

It has been an interesting week, being in both Washington and New York. One of the highlights was spending a good deal of enjoyable time talking with Karen Stephenson and Patricia Shafer, both authors in "Enlightened Power: How Women are Transforming the Practice of Leadership" (Linda Coughlin - Editor).

High on our list of discussion points was trust in its various guises. I pick out this item from businessknowhow as it raises an interesting "gender" point which I am still digesting ....

"Trafficking In Trust: The Art and Science of Human Knowledge Networks" by Karen Stephenson

She had been mentored by the very best. It was all because the CEO had had an epiphany. He had looked around his company and seen that he was wheeling and dealing mostly with men - where were the women in the equation? Why weren't they involved? And then he realized that he was the sole party responsible for both the absence and silence of women. In a quiet promise to himself, he decided to change the context and shift the equation. And he did - she was now CEO. But the appointment alone was not enough to garner the impact he sought. Oh sure, he saw the press rally 'round her - both praising and picking. But that's not the kind of recognition he was expecting for his new successor. Instead, what he saw was that the male managers within the enterprise didn't trust the new female CEO - perhaps because they had difficulty trusting any woman. Quite frankly, he had not spent much time in nurturing those relationships to get past that ol' familiar "gender issue." He also saw that women managers did not trust the new woman CEO either! Did she sell out? What did she do that they had not done or would not do? Surely her promotion was not the result of mere meritocracy! If time is appropriately spent in building collegial relationships in the leadership network, gender issues can become irrelevant. But when leaders don't do their homework and fail to establish their networks, then other factors, like gender, take center stage. In the final analysis, merit matters, but only when networks are nurtured."

Read more at ....

In the conversation, it seemed to me that there are a couple of corollaries. First, we "make judgements" (about people and situations) as a precursor to "having trust". It may be interesting to analyse the components of those judgements as networks of thoughts, experiences and learning. A kind of "meta network", or, to steal a phrase from Chris Argyris and others, a kind of "double loop network", where a judgement network is needed to allow a trusted network to build.

And, second, whilst I do agree with Karen that the gender issue remains difficult, the same mechanism is at work in, for example, dealing with organizations that have employees of many cultures and geographic backgrounds. I know from my own experience that without forming good communication links and working networks in such organizations then the "local" culture can raise its head as an issue. Respect for the diversity of others plays a critical role here.