5. Trust in the Face of Power

As I worked on the ideas in Churn, I felt certain things were becoming clear: that trust was indeed a critical ingredient of successful diversity in many of the everyday settings and relationships of our lives; that wiseness— seeing full humanity in human difference— was a mindset for winning trust between people of otherwise wary identities; that giving people the opportunity to tell you about their values, their needs, and their own agendas amounted to wiseness and was a usable strategy; that when giving feedback across identity divides, it was especially important to convey faith in the other party’s potential; and that follow-through, giving real help in achieving these things, was just as essential.

It wasn’t that I believed these things, even if implemented all together, would always and definitely eliminate diversity tension. Rather, my growing conviction was that they could reduce these tensions— provide traction against them— in our relationships and everyday settings and thus expand the approaches we had to address this central American challenge.

In answer to the question “Is wiseness— offering trust to beget trust— for everyone?”: I’m afraid it’s too much to expect from the less powerfully situated in a diverse setting, especially early on. It simply makes them too vulnerable. And it could well seem impossible. In describing what he saw as President Barack Obama’s exceptional ability to offer trust to the American public, including white Americans, the African American journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote, “The vast majority of us [African Americans] are, necessarily, too crippled by our defences to ever consider such a proposition.

Still, Mooijman feels they raise an important caution for leaders, managers, and people in more powerfully situated roles in society: “Having power acts like a double-edged sword when it comes to trust development. Trusting others is particularly effective for promoting reciprocal trust, whereas distrusting others is particularly destructive for promoting reciprocal trust.

Holding onto one’s faith in people’s capacity for fairness from a disempowered position, and in the face of intense opposition, while saturated with risks, has a moral power capable of moving a presidential election or, for that matter, the soul of a nation.

Second, these efforts should involve the participation of as many people as possible. When people feel they haven’t been heard they tend not to trust. But when their input is a regular, normalized part of how a setting functions, they’re better able to trust it even when they disagree.