Trust

Source: Yuriy Seleznev/Shutterstock

Trust is a nebulous thing - it's hard to define and even harder to develop and maintain. It's the cornerstone of our relationships. Trusting someone means you can rely on them, that you have confidence in them and that you feel safe with them both emotionally and physically. It's easy to say you trust someone, but it's hard to do and it's equally hard to be trustworthy.

Relationships cannot survive without trust because it is the willingness to be vulnerable to another person based on the confidence that the other is benevolent, honest, open, reliable and competent.

For organisations like schools, trust is a powerful resource in day to day work. It plays an important role in visioning, modelling, coaching, managing and mediating (Tschannen-Moran, 2014). A school built on trust is more productive, more engaged, happier. It's buoyed along on it's own tide of positive emotion. People feel it when they walk into the office. They see it watching kids at work and play. They hear it in teachers' voices. They see it in our faces.

What to do when trust is broken? How much does it hurt? How widely does it spread? Can it be built back? Is it possible to make yourself vulnerable again? Can we again have confidence that the other will be benevolent, honest, open, reliable and competent once more? How long does it take? Trust matters; it matters in our personal relationships, in our working lives, in our social lives... and in our school.

'I don't ask for much, I only want trust,

And you know it don't come easy'

Ringo Starr

Tschannen-Moran, Megan (2014) Trust Matter: Leadership for Successful Schools, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco