Second, these efforts should involve the participation of as many people as possible. When people feel they havenât been heard they tend not to trust. But when their input is a regular, normalized part of how a setting functions, theyâre better able to trust it even when they disagree.
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Leaving out trust instigated by the less empowered would miss how behaving out of trustâ with faith in other peopleâs capacity for fairnessâ can be its own source of power, even when, or especially when, it comes from people lower in the social order.
Second, ask people to identify features in a setting that imply that some identities belong there more than others, or that expectations are higher for some identities than for others.
Experience can tell us important things about how to make good ideas workâ for example, that how something is done can be as important as what is done. A cues audit can yield information that is invaluable to the life of a setting. Look at how dramatically it changed 3M. But experience with such efforts tells us something else too: to avoid a heavy hand in implementing it. It shouldnât become a tyranny. I suspect you know what Iâm saying. We shouldnât use relatively small violations of emerging mores to morally condemn or socially ostracize a personâ to âcancelâ them. Terms or behaviour that degrade the humanity of other groupsâ mortal sinsâ have to be off-limits. But experience suggests itâs wiser to treat venial sins with more latitude. Reacting too strongly to them can undermine the very goal weâre afterâ a setting with a climate of greater trust and lower churn. Remember the manager who keeps talking to his staff about his European cathedral tour when many of them can't afford an out-of-town vacation.
The larger point is that the effort to foster trust in diverse settingsâ a university, a small business, a sixth-grade classroom, a new start-up, a medical office, a magazineâ is likely to be incomplete without seeing, without, as much as possible, walking in the shoes of the people involved.
Itâs message, as noted, is that trust-building is a game played largely on the ground. Itâs who listens, listens again, is genuinely welcoming, and collaboratively gives people the help they need to succeed in a setting. Itâs whoâs wise. This is the heart of the matter. And anybodyâ that is, everybodyâ can do it.