The Merits of Mistrust

Petrichor Post: A Fresh Look at Culture and the Organization

Something doesn’t feel right. Climbing into the old-school shaft elevator on this particular morning, though you’ve ridden it 100 times before. Taking the short cut home through the alley that night, despite the fact that you go this way every evening. Sharing your thoughts in the meeting, because you’re sure your manager will dismiss them and you. And you want to survive.

We can all relate to the misgivings found in each of these scenarios, these hesitations brought on by our attendance to subtle or sometimes not so subtle cues in our environment. And these nuanced or overt signals that cause uneasiness serve as a gift to us, not a curse. They inform us that something is amiss, telling us we are not physically or psychologically safe and that our own or others well-being is at risk.

James Reason, one of the fathers of Human and Organizational Performance (HOP) thinking, labels this experience "chronic uneasiness". Others have come to refer to it as "healthy uneasiness", also to indicate the need to remain vigilant in today's dynamic work environment, and that it is a very healthy and safe sensibility to cultivate.

Today however, I am proposing we call this approach by no other name than its own, mistrust. Mistrust, this place where unease reigns supreme, can be seen as sitting on the spectrum of trust as its polar opposite. In this position, mistrust not only serves to inform us when trust is absent, but it also acts as - and is - an invaluable teacher. When we listen, watch for, and then reflect on the signals of mistrust, it teaches us a great deal about a more trusted path forward. Those of us who have missed or dismissed our feelings of mistrust have often come to regret it, unless we were wise enough to milk our mistrust for all it offered us and then carry that learning forward to more effective performance. Did you also know that mistrust can act like a super reliable workout partner? It can, because the ability to attend with awareness to what's going on around us is a bit of a muscle that responds to practice. Think Sherlock. We can get better at it the more we use it.

Many of us will conclude with minimal granularity that we trust or mistrust a situation or person. But when asked why, we can struggle to state our reasons with any specificity. However if we are asked to reflect on what led to our conclusions, we can often identify with growing detail, what cues existed there that led us there. And can actually lead us to insight in the process of reflection. Scanning our environment for cues of trust and mistrust allows us an opportunity to consciously identify, stay engaged with, and consider our responses with expansive focus. We are strengthening our ability to be more mindful and sustain engagement by attending to subtlety in this conscious way.

The ability to consciously and quickly identify cues that lead us to determine we are in a trusting or mistrustful situation and to what degree, is relative to context and competence. Context refers to where the event is taking place and how much time we have to deal with it. For example, do we need to respond instinctively like in the face of an oncoming vehicle in our lane? Or does the situation allow us to consider what is occurring, such as a planned and seemingly regular visit to a lab to observe scientists at work. And our level of competence matters from both a technical and situationally aware perspective. Therefore, organizations would do well to build robust interpersonal competence coursework, workshops, and practicums into their curriculum to complement their technical training programs. Training on techniques such as mindfulness, emotional intelligence situational awareness, and my personal favorite, "Becoming More Like Sherlock Holmes" can help all become more attuned to the signals in the environment that help us determine if we are safe or unsafe, trusting or mistrusting and consequently act from a position of greater awareness.

We are operating within a new paradigm of safety and health – one that embraces human and organizational complexity and interdependence. In contrast, organizations that continue to uphold unidimensional and time-worn principles like “trust permeates the organization” without the inclusion of uneasiness and the value of mistrust, work against their own purposes. Retaining incomplete tenets like this are not only unattainable in their disassociation to the human condition, they are misguided. Mistrust, has great merit in its own right, beyond its value as an indicator of trust’s absence. Mistrust is an agent of insight, innovation, and initiative functioning as both catalyst for reflection and initiative. It is what fuels a questioning attitude and propels us to believe there’s a better way. As we enter a new decade, viewing mistrust through a fresh lens may serve to advance society, our organizations, and our lives more authentically.

Gratitude to my undying champions Bill Mairson and Geoff Beausoleil, my newest inspirer and mentor Earl Carnes, and my always-mentor, colleague, and reviewer, Jim Marinus.