INsight/ Trust in Colors

Photo by Raka Rachgo on Unsplash.

Manila, 13 May 2020 — What’s the color of your trust, when you’re relaxed and when you’re stressed?

Building Trust

This month, our theme in Grow3Leaders is Engage and we are unpacking how leaders invest in building trust with people. We already explored Three Trust Barriers. Which of these barriers is holding back your leadership?

In this post, our perspective is that where we put our trust will vary depending on our worldview and our state of mind. We use the Work In All Colors model to illustrate this.

From developmental psychology we know that during our life, we gain access to a range of expanding worldviews as we navigate our life conditions and cope with the increasing complexity of the world we live in.

Coping with Life Conditions

During the times when we are doing well in our life and are experiencing personal growth, our worldview is likely to expand.

In contrast, when we encounter a severe challenge to our life conditions, such as now during the Covid19 pandemic, we face a choice to either keep growing or regress to a narrower worldview for the sense of security it offers. 

In simplified form, these worldviews are shown in the Work In All Colors chart, starting with the narrowest which we enter as babies (Purple), to the most expansive that’s known to us at this time (Turquoise).

To fathom that most expansive and holistic worldview, think of how the governments of the world joined hands in 2015 to adopt the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate Agreement. That marked an unprecedented shift of global consciousness and collective action. Maintaining that shift is hard work.

Today, our world situation looks quite different and more at risk of division, and that demonstrates the choices and challenges we have for influencing change, individually as people and voters, and collectively through our businesses, organizations, communities, cities, and countries.

The Color of Your Trust

So what’s the color of your trust, when you’re relaxed and when you’re stressed like now as we cope with Covid19? In which worldview do you put your trust? And how do you communicate with people who find comfort in a different worldview?

To find out more about these seven color-coded worldviews, take our Work In All Colors training. 

In Grow3Leaders, we unpack these worldviews and how to work with each of them as we practice building trust. That helps us become influencers for positive changes in our workplaces and our world.

We are a private community of leaders from countries around the world, and from different generations, who are committed to learning and practicing effective leadership behaviors ‘out loud’ and together to create positive change in our workplaces.

Joining us is free of charge—not free of commitment. Send us a request if you feel that you are up to our Grow3Leaders challenge and are ready to join together with three of your colleagues in your workplace.

We look forward to learning together with you and your team.