2 Comments

How about the concept of “owed trust/respect” and “earned trust/respect”. Ie in the workplace perhaps owed trust/respect looks something like, “you’re a human, I’m a human, lets start with common decency in our interactions. You’ve got this job because someone thought you’re up to it”. Earned respect/trust looks like “you’ve been here a while now and you’re doing well.”

My thoughts are that the baseline “owed” allows teams to move to honest conversations which lead to improvements and optimal performance. What do you think?

Expand full comment

It seems that with this ethic in mind, you “owe” trust and respect at the outset of a relationship because of the type of person you choose to be, not who you’re giving it to. The owed is in the giving not the receiving.

Expand full comment