Trust
Trust is, as Stephen Covey states, “... the glue of life …. The foundational principle that holds all relationships” and thus applies to both personal and professional relationships.
Over the last few years, there has been an increasing focus on soft skills in the classroom and beyond. Communication skills, empathy, positive attitudes, dependability, growth mindset, ability to work with a team, loyalty, good work ethic, integrity, situational awareness are - inter alia - defined as soft skills attributes and are also evident within the IB Learner Profile attributes. Soft skills have become increasingly valued as a key to success. As such, it is interesting to note that for families from traditional rote based learning education systems, the combination of academic rigour and the soft skills is frequently cited as a key component in the desire to move their children to an international school.
The significance of trust, the foundational principle that holds all relationships, is evident in Frances Frei’s 2018 TED Talk How to build (and rebuild) trust. She states that “trust, if we're going to rebuild it, we have to understand its component parts. The component parts of trust are super well understood. There's three things about trust. If you sense that I am being authentic, you are much more likely to trust me. If you sense that I have real rigor in my logic, you are far more likely to trust me. And if you believe that my empathy is directed towards you, you are far more likely to trust me. When all three of these things are working, we have great trust. But if any one of these three gets shaky, if any one of these three wobbles, trust is threatened.”
In A Matter of Trust, the importance of relational trust (akin to Frei’s notion of authenticity, rigour, and empathy) is highlighted as a key component enabling Boston’s Henry Grew Elementary School to improve significantly in terms of instruction culture, student achievement and retention of teachers.
I am mindful that trust, along with collaboration and other soft skills, allows individuals to work together and - in the words of Simon Sinek - "The ability of a group of people to do remarkable things hinges on how well those people pull together as a team."
When we ask our students or colleagues to go outside their comfort zone, to be risk takers, we are asking them to trust themselves, us, and the process.
How do you, within your educational setting, engender (or further engender) a sense of trust so as to benefit individuals and all those within the community?