Vertrauen Macht Schlagzeilen

Allerorten wird Vertrauen verspielt, verschwindet, hört auf oder wird zumindest erschüttert. Seltener wächst es mal und gelegentlich wird um Vertrauen gekämpft. Vertrauen ist ein fragiles Gut - und interessanterweise auch ein Machtinstrument. Zumindest dann, wenn öffentlich das Vertrauen ausgesprochen oder eben entzogen wird. Dank sozialer Medien ist diese Form, Druck auszuüben, nicht mehr auf Politiker oder Journalistinnen beschränkt, in Twitter und Facebook kann jede(r) vor mehr oder weniger großem Publikum die Vertrauensfrage stellen.

Schlagzeilen wie „Drei Viertel aller Deutsche-Bahn Tweets der letzten Woche sind negativ“ sieht man nicht in den Medien. Noch nicht?

Learning for Life

When you hear the word „SCHOOL“, what do you think of?
Joy? Encouragement? Acceptance? Trust? Love?

I don’t. Most of us don’t. And I realized how sad that is when I was flying to Helsinki and back last week. Or rather, when I read the newspapers, as I always do on the plane.

Somewhere between Düsseldorf and Helsinki a small article caught my eyes: In Tokyo, parents can track wether children safely arrive at school with a card that originally was developed as a ticket and payment card for public transport. When the child uses the RFID card to check-in at school or leaves a train station, or arrives back at home, the parent is notified with a text message or email. (See here)

Sounds like a good idea for parents? Hm. You could also see it as a service that lives off parental fear, a service that manipulates parents into feeling either “assured” or “worried” without making the way to school safer.

The other piece of news jumped at me and everyone else who passed by a German newspaper stand last Thursday: Tim K., a 17-year-old boy had murdered 16 people in a shooting spree that started at his former school in Winnenden, a small town in southern Germany. The boy was described as “inconspicious”, “average” and “shy” by those who knew him. Apparently, he did not have close friends and some suggested that he had been mobbed at school.

We need better security solutions, more stringent gun control laws, experts were quoted in the news. Other experts said that no security measures could have prevented the killings. It reminded me of the RFID security card in Tokyo: We long for more security, but technological solutions or legal restrictions may not be the answer.

Clearly, for Tim, school had been a place that was associated with problems, frustration, anger and hatred. Better security for the school would not have prevented these associations.
But imagine Tim had associated his former school with joy, encouragement, acceptance. It would have been impossible for him to even think of school in combination with shooting and killing.

For me, the massacre of Winnenden tells more about the current educational system than about gaps in security monitoring.

Schools that encourage children to be responsible actors and creators, rather than victims or recipients, schools where children feel accepted and loved and can develop their individual gifts may sound like a naive dream. Yet, I think societies must invest in these dreams, in educational reforms, school infrastructure and a holistic learning experience. Not only in order to prevent school massacres, but in order to instill creative energy, constructive power and respect for others in the next generation – qualities which our communities and in fact our earth need so badly.

Ingredients of Trust

Economist Intelligence Unit published a "recommended reading" survey on business collaboration and the role of trust. Some predictable outcomes:

• Trust is seen as a key factor in collaboration, but the reality is often disappointing (classic difference between the ideal world and reality)
• Face to face collaboration is superior to virtual collaboration
• Good collaborators view their co-collaborators or partner organizations more positive – which underlines that positive attitude makes a good collaborator, and a happier one at that.
  

What I found interesting are the qualities that were used to break down trust:
Honesty, Willingness to exchange information, Ethical behavior, Shared objectives, Motivation, Respectfulness towards others, Positive Attitude, Ability to do a job well and Consideration of others were the most important factors, in this order. Less important according to the survey are expertise, communication skills, intelligence, experience, and whether someone works for a reputable organization. Experts in an organization are not necessarily trustworthy collaborators…
– These factors, especially the high-ranking ones, are interesting because if you want to improve trust, these are qualities you need to work on.

What is missing in the listing (because it is even more elusive!) is body language. Body language tells more about relations between two people than they may be consciously aware. Good collaborators intuitively will embody (in the true sense) openness and empathy. Unfortunately, most of this gets lost in virtual collaboration. This might be the main reason why virtual will never equal face to face collaboration.

...but with a little help, at least some of the body language finds its way back into virtual communication - emoticons may not be considered good style in business communication, but I am sure it helps. :P

Thanks for alerting me to the EIU survey to knowledgefutures