Last week a CEO asked me ‘if anything had really changed in the people development space over the past 15 years?’

The declining angle of his eyebrows and gaze gave away his real question ‘is there anything that you could tell me, that I don’t already know?’

I love a challenge.

I responded with deep knowing in my belly and firmly stated that the answer was most certainly ‘No!’

He smiled.

‘So what can you tell me about all the things that haven’t changed?’ he asked.

Again, the smirk in his tilting lips masked the real question ‘So why have we not mastered all the basics we have known for so long?’

Again, as if spurred by a rush of adrenaline, I boldly stated ‘in the end, it will always be about relationships, and the pivot of Trust that they are built on. We simply continue to struggle marrying the demands of our work with the sensitivity of nurturing lasting connection’.

For an accountant in a global fund management business, he unexpectedly nodded his head in sage like agreement.

I think I passed.

There is a common thread to this conversation that I regularly have in boardrooms.  All the teams that I work with want to master relationships. They seek to understand the meaning of trust, what it is, how to build it and what to focus on to be more deliberate about it. It’s so fundamental to all relationships and yet we don’t always understand how to build, guard and shape it.

How do you understand the fundamentals of Trust?

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