Paradigm Makers Moonlit Minds Journal: Edition 7

Table of Contents

• Jess’ Monthly Reflection

• What does trust mean?

• What progress have we made on trust in the 21st ce …

• What could trust look like in the future?

Jess’ Monthly Reflection

As I write this I’m sitting on the traditional land of the Taungurung and Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung People watching the sunset and listening to the breeze in the trees. After a busy month, the chance to reflect and rest was appreciated.

If you follow me on LinkedIn, you may have seen I spent the last 4 weeks deep-diving into the topic of trust in teams. This is part of an ongoing Tiny Experiment Paradigm Makers is running in 2025:

Every 4 weeks, I will post a poll on LinkedIn for you to choose the theme of my posts, allowing us to deep dive and learn together throughout the year.

During the deep dive, I explored how to identify, assess, manage and review trust. While it might look like I had a plan I didn’t. Behind the scenes, I struggled with this project. Initially, I’d planned a content schedule, with a logical flow, but then life happened. Most days I created the post on the day, which is not how I like to work.

Moving forward I have a plan to avoid the chaos. My next deep dive will be Executive’s Role in Mental Health, but I need at least 9 extra topics so let me know if there's something else you'd like me to explore.

This month I also celebrated the end of my first Tiny Experiment - I will post on LinkedIn every day for 90 days (11 November 2024 - 8 February 2025). When I say celebrate, I really mean celebrate as I found this experiment particularly challenging. I’m finalising my closing report, which I’ll share on LinkedIn later this week.

The rest of this edition will share the insights I gathered on trust from the perspectives of yesterday, today and tomorrow.

I hope you enjoyed last Thursday’s Snow Moon,

Jess Price

Founder & Chief Vision Officer

EXPLORING THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT

What does trust mean?

To begin my deep dive into trust, I wanted to understand what trust meant. Historically, trust was seen as essential for stable social relationships, economic exchange and overall functioning of society. Yet despite researchers identifying the importance of trust in interpersonal and group behaviour, there was an initial lack of definitional agreement.

Early definitions described trust as a set of socially learned expectations about other people, organisations and social order. In 1983, Barber characterised trust as a set of "socially learned and socially confirmed expectations that people have of each other, of the organisations and institutions in which they live, and of the natural and moral social orders that set the fundamental understandings for their lives." (Barber B. 1983. The Logic and Limits of Trust. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press. pp.p 164 -65). I like to think of this definition as "the vibe", or defining pornography as “you know it when you see it” (references to The Castle and a 1964 US Supreme Court case).

The problem with these types of definitions is their ambiguity. We like to think societal norms clarify abstract concepts like trust, yet, in reality, they do the opposite. Amelia Earhart’s last flight is a good example of this.

The historical decline in institutional trust also demonstrates the importance of a clear, consistent definition of trust. Research between 1960-1997 captured this trend, finding significant drops in institutional trust among Americans:

^{Source: Nye JS, Zelikow PD, King DC. 1997. Why People Don’t Trust Government. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press. 339 pp; in Roderick M. Kramer, Trust and Distrust in Organisations: Emerging Perspectives, Enduring Questions. Annual Review of Psychology. 1999. 50:569-98.}

For something we've agreed is important, this significant drop should have raised a few red flags as we headed towards the 21st century.

For comparison, here are the levels of trust for these same institutions in 2024*:

^{*I didn’t use the same methodology so these figures may not be an accurate comparison.}

IDENTIFYING OPPORTUNITIES FOR WORK TODAY

What progress have we made on trust in the 21st century?

Over the last 10 years, there’s been a significant increase in research and thought leadership on the topic of trust. With some research linking trust level to economic consequences, organisations now understand they can leverage trust to build a positive workplace culture and increase profits. Despite this intention, we continue to see examples of organisations failing to prioritise trust in decision-making.

Measuring trust is also something we have identified as important. One 2022 Deloitte study found 55% of organisations have no trust tracking in place, but nearly half plan to start measuring trust within 12 months. It is unclear how many began measuring trust.

In addition to Deloitte’s trust questionnaire, other measurement tools also exist. Here are a few of my favourites:

• The Leadership Trust Index

• The Trust Equation

• Typology of Trust Constructs

Meanwhile, Rachel Botsman, a leading expert in trust, offers a different perspective on the decline in trust we continue to see in the world around us. Instead of declining, she argues trust is in a state of redirection or fragmentation. We are moving from the traditional institutional model of trust to a model of distributed trust. Instead of placing our trust in executives and experts above us, we are looking sideways to peers, strangers and crowds. This is creating a dispersion of authority and fracturing trust. The recent controversy around Meta and TikTok is a useful example of this shift in action.

CREATING A NEW WORK PARADIGM FOR TOMORROW

What could trust look like in the future?

While I explored many interpretations of trust from various perspectives Rachel Botsman’s is my favourite. I believe it provides a useful perspective as we consider how we can create new trust paradigms for tomorrow.

Speaking at the 2024 Would Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Botsman said: "A lack of acceptance that the trust dynamics have changed, I think, is a systemic problem. We're trying to solve trust issues in the distributed world through an institutional mindset." 

This assessment of the current state aligns with the conclusions I reached during my trust deep dive. I agree with Botsman that a distributed world requires a new way of thinking about and defining trust. While shifting to a distributive view of trust may sound confusing or difficult, the reality is we still have no clear definition of trust.

Reflecting on my conclusions about how to identify, assess, manage and review trust, I second Botsman’s claim that crucial context is missing from conversations about trust. This context is essential in a distributed world, because in reality, we may all have very different definitions and understandings of what trust is. It is only in this context that we can meaningfully build trust.

To understand what this model could look like, I broke it down using Paradigm Makers Essential Elements:

• People: Trust is the foundational confidence that individuals will act ethically, grow and improve, collaborate with their communities, make value-aligned decisions, and apply their specialised expertise - reinforced by a willingness to be vulnerable.

  • Outcome: This trust builds an environment of empowerment, cooperation, continuous learning and consistent high-quality results, strengthening relationships, reducing stress and driving collective success

• Innovation: Trust creates an environment where risk-taking, adaptability, diverse perspectives, and continuous exploration are actively encouraged.

  • Outcome: This environment fuels breakthroughs, resilience in the face of change, open communication and learning from failures, allowing teams to refine processes, identify new opportunities and sustain ongoing progress.

• Technology: Trust in technology encompasses the ethical and effective use of new tools, responsible data management, supportive automation, reliable connectivity, and cohesive system integration - ensuring technology complements human intelligence rather than replacing them.

  • Outcome: This trust creates increased efficiency, better decision-making, and seamless collaboration because technology is welcomed and used transparently, enabling continuous improvement, stakeholder confidence, and enhanced human capabilities.

• Economics: Trust in economic practices encompasses fair resource allocation, ethical revenue generation and reinvestment, prudent expenditure, equitable compensation, responsible growth and long-term sustainability.

  • Outcome: This trust fosters financial stability, shared prosperity, and confidence in economic decisions, which is reflected in fair compensation, reduced turnover, optimal resource use, and lasting social and environmental benefits.

• Norms: Trust in an organisation’s social and structural foundations ensures consistency, respect and reliability in how people interact and make decisions.

  • Outcome: This trust creates a cohesive, ethical and high-performing environment where communication is honest, leadership is inspirational, roles are clear, and values guide actions, leading to productive collaboration and collective success.

This model could return us to a set of socially learned expectations, but if we can clearly articulate what trust is through a broad structure, we can adapt for individual flexibility. Alternatively, we can live in a Black Mirror episode, adopting Shopify's "trust battery" approach for every interaction we have with each other…

What do you think?