People around the world have many reasons to be frightened in these times: the ongoing pandemic, climate change, racism on the rise… And yet living in fear is dangerous – people retreat from the world into bubbles of isolation in which the fear is stirred up even more. We see an increase of fear in families, companies and in society all around.
The antidote of fear we feel is trust – in ourselves, in our families, our communities and our workplaces. Trust enables us to engage with others and make meaning of the world around us, and find hope for the future even when much is uncertain.
But how do we move from places of fear to places of trust? Trust is not self-evident and neither does it come by itself. And contrary to popular opinion, trust does not have to be earned. If you decide to trust others, you decide against fear. An important step that expands trust – and that needs courage.
This is an invitation to be courageous. Courageous to reach out to others and take steps with them to create new ways of thinking and working – trusting that taking steps will lead to positive less fearful places. And will bring trust. Even though we don’t know the answers to our questions yet.
Some examples of courageous steps we can take
- Just do an unknown step. Follow an intuition and dare.
- Listen to others. Just listen and help them to reorganize their thoughts and feelings. Even if you might think that you don’t have the time to do that.
- Listen to other perspectives. Even if they are contrary to yours.
- Re-designing how, when and where we live and work safely
- Building engagement with leaders and teams to share in (re-)creating the workplaces
- Showing vulnerability as a leader and gather people around this quest
- Deciding to trust the people we work with, even when they are working remotely and we cannot always see them
- Let go of (old) ideas and beliefs on how we should work and live together
- Thinking about how we can contribute to the relief of the root causes of fear in our time