Trust

In my college years I would take just about any job to pay my rent and tuition. I insulated the crawl spaces of houses, forked cans of peas onto pallets at a pea cannery and shoveled green chicken manure. I learned a life lesson when I worked for a ragtag wood company that sold Douglas fir by the cord…cut , split and stacked. We would locate a slash pile and slowly take it apart with peevees and chain saws. Some of these tangles could exceed 20 feet in height. Whether the pile was at a construction site or on forest service land…it was back breaking work.

On one particular day we stood at the base of a slash pile that seemed impossibly high and gnarly and my foreman decided to give us a pep talk. He said, ” boys we are going to climb this shit pile and take it apart. Now, there are two kinds of people: 1) the guy who says get up there and take that hill. Send me a report when you’re done. These are MANAGERS. 2) the guy who says take a good look at my ass …you’ll see it all the way up the hill. These are LEADERS.” I am a leader… let’s go.”

This was a lesson I will never forget, a lesson about how to gain a person’ trust.

Later, the foreman told me that he first heard that speech in the Central Highlands of Vietnam at the start of a particularly crappy mission on a hill much more dangerous than any slash pile. I was glad to hear it, too because it made me think about the nature of trust ; what is it? how do you earn it? and how important is it? Now, with many more experiences under my belt, I think I have answers to these questions.

Trust is-simply- the foundational principle of all human interaction. It is the basic building block of civilization that makes all human progress possible. On the most mundane level , imagine what would happen if trust was removed. We trust the grocer to sell food that is not poisonous, we trust the doctor not to willfully harm us and we even trust that a cashier will try to give us the correct change. Without trust, life as we know it would be impossible.

We trust our children to providers of child care and education. We trust our money to bankers we may never have met personally…because of mutually agreed upon behaviors, we can build a future, enjoy a safe present and dream of better things. We gain trust over time. Trust requires a long visit to a land called INTEGRITY. Integrity is a journey and not a destination. We trust those who repeatedly react in principled ways to life’s challenges. As we view the consistent excellent behavior of a person we begin to believe in them. These persons are always armed with grit and ” the facts of the matter at hand.” They know the road and they walk it with grace.

Historian Timothy Snyder reminds us that “without truth there can be no trust” and trustworthy folks will consistently present the facts of a situation. Leaders are pathfinders and they mark the way with facts. If they do not clearly mark our path we will be prone to dangerous missteps and exhausted with wasted effort. They are people who have made the journey before and know the road. They build confidence and the certainty that we will achieve our goals. On the other hand, the lack of facts creates the perfect environment for our exploitation because we are quickly in a state of disorientation and despair. We can not mark our passing or see our goals. Megalomaniacs and power addicts will always war on the factual because the state of despair motivates us to grasp at leadership…good or bad.In a state of heightened anxiety, we forget to apply the integrity test. Any leadership looks like salvation. We want to be led and the false leader is always ready to accommodate …”only I can fix it.” If we are made desperate enough, even a cult looks good. The state of chaos is the sociopath’s playground.

Now, decision time is upon us and we need our trails marked by a leader with integrity and guts. Someone who has earned our trust by repeatedly scaling the dangerous slash piles of modern life. We need someone who has earned our trust by marking our path with the directional signage of factual communication. Good leadership creates hope, opportunity and belief that goals are attainable. We must choose someone who is trustworthy.

November 3rd looms.

I hope we remember the words of H.L. Mencken:” it is mutual trust , even more that mutual interest, that holds human associations together.” Let’s elect someone we can believe in.