What can you trust?

We recently did a free webinar for our community on leading right now. Britta Christiansen, Ryan Castle and I talked about how leaders deal in hope, and what was involved in managing that. We looked at managing our own state, our team and our organisations, and how a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic requires responses that are different from Business As Usual, although some of them are more intense versions of best practice. 

I finished on what the future held. What I was really talking about is how you as a leader deal with the reality that no one knows what the future holds. The second, third and fourth order effects of this are simply unthinkable. For every theory like “less spending on overseas holidays means more money spent on…” there is another equally valid theory to the opposite, such as “with high job insecurity and decimation of some industries, nobody will be spending much on anything”. No one knows. 

Which is good because you’re not going to get blamed for making a mistake by trying something new or different. And you will need to make lots of mistakes because you will need to try lots of different things. 

But it’s hard. Where are the role models? The clues for success? And in darker moments, how is this all going to pan out? Is it possible that our lives and societies will be changed beyond recognition? 

The answers to those questions are that it will be somewhere in between and also something completely different at the same time. Some things will be worse than they were and for longer. Other things will be better forever. It’s too easy to say we’ll get through this and we’ll be stronger, better etc.  It’s also too easy to get frustrated and angry that the world has changed in this way. 

There’s a great book called Daring to Trust by David Richo which is primarily about relationships but also looks at trust on a much bigger scale. He says we need to trust that the universe may hurt but will not deliberately harm us. We have to focus on those things that can be changed with our reasonable effort and accept those things that can’t.

So, what can we trust about the way the world is going to be and how we’re going to be in it? Richo says “our trust is in our inner resources, not in our entitlement to have the world arrange itself to suit us. All we can trust about what happens is that it will invariably give us a chance to grow”. In other words, back yourself and your potential to make the most of what happens. 

I am realistic about the challenges in front of us, not pessimistic or optimistic. But what gives me hope about the future is that there will be opportunities to grow as a human being. In my philosophy of life, that’s why I’m here.