Crisis

„Crisis is a productive state. You just have to take away its taste for disaster.“ (Max Frisch)

I read this quote more than 10 years ago, when I had just arrived in Switzerland. Although I couldn't get it out of my head, it initially triggered a lack of understanding. Over the years of parenthood, changing working relationships and roles, more clarity emerged about the resilience-building effect of crisis. This was closely linked to the realization that I always liked to avoid problematic, challenging situations: for example, situations in which people who think differently "trigger" me.

The productive in crises

In terms of systems theory, crises are moments in which the complexity of a system exceeds its ability to process information. In addition, the equation applies: the greater the complexity, the more contradictions there are and the more they have to be endured. To a certain extent, the logic of "right is wrong and wrong is right" applies. And this is where it becomes exciting and relevant to the question of whether and how crisis can be productive. The less willing and able we are to endure contradictions - both internally and externally - the more difficult it will be for us to use crises productively.

Contradictions outside the "bubble"

In this day and age, when we are lulled into a state of "we all agree" by social media, this is more the rule than the exception. If we then come across people who think differently in the physical reality outside the bubble, their contradictions take us by surprise. But it is precisely these contradictions that we should face up to and seek out social situations outside the bubble. We should also become more aware of our own parts. After all, contradictions only become problematic when I silence parts of myself that can gain something from the contradictions on the outside.

The catastrophic in crises

So how does a crisis become catastrophic? Most likely when an individual or a group carries on as before and relies on the supposedly tried and tested: "Fight fire with fire". This can happen if actionism is followed by even more actionism. Or in other words: if we continue to work in the system driven by avoidance instead of on the system, this is a guarantee for standstill.

--This post also appeared on LinkedIn--

Trust

I’d like to start this blog with a consideration of trust. Why? We can think of trust as the glue to our relationships and interactions. At the same time, through the bubble of social media algorithms, we experience modern phenomena like deep fakes, conspiracies, and manipulation. And this makes the concept of pure, blind trust feel somewhat problematic.

Social trust 

Statements like "Trust must be earned," "Trust is good, control is better," or "Trust takes a long time to build but can be quickly lost" reflect, on the one hand, a certain worldview. But they also reveal what an important, yet fragile social asset trust is. So it’s unsurprising that trust has received so much attention from the social sciences. 

In the sociologist Niklas Luhmann’s system theory, trust is a means to reduce complexity. In an increasingly complex world, this becomes very important: trust enables people to remain effective and reactive in uncertain environments. If I can trust others, I don't have to absorb every piece of information myself. And as game theory makes clear, trust also pays off economically.

Organisational trust

In the “constructive controversy” of psychologist Morton Deutsch, trust is, among other things, the basic prerequisite for creative problem-solving in organizations. That is, trust underpins a supportive environment in which people feel comfortable even when taking risks: for example, when presenting new ideas. 

This is also evident through the phenomenon of Psychological Safety that has become prominent at Google. Here, trust becomes the invisible, central factor: equal speaking time, personal openness colloquially "not feeling stupid when asking questions"[PJ1] – without trust in the group, this is difficult to achieve.

Cooperative trust

In participatory climate protection projects with various stakeholder groups, I have learned that without trust, there is no co-creation or cooperation. Especially when stakeholders who pursue different goals behind hardened fronts come together.

Consider, for example, employees of a city’s administrative, representing their department’s policies, who meet activists that are vocally critical of the department and what they allege to be its inactivity. Both parties are likely to presume and project characteristics on to the other. But if this can be openly acknowledge, – if both the rational and emotional elements of the encounter can be addressed, the space and momentum for joint action can be created.

A basis for this can be provided by Theory U. Through “system mapping”, participants come to the realization that we are all parts of a system: one whereby the parts mutually create their own perceptions of their different co-citizens. Without real contact and encounters, the unchallenged image of the “other side” will stubbornly remain.

From my practical experience, in addition to holistic methodological approaches - those that include rather than exclude emotions - simple in-person encounters are important for building trust.

🌳 How trust in cooperation grows: Through reliability, openness, presence, approachability, willingness to make mistakes and experiment, eye-level dialogue, respect, and shared experiences.

🎲 How trust in cooperation is lost: Through control, indecisiveness, finger pointing, lack of transparency in decisions and interactions, and playing for time.

Self-trust

But what about trust in oneself? In my coaching approach and in my own inner-process, I have learned that self-trust helps us deal more confidently with uncertainty. It is related to self-acceptance, self-responsibility, and "awareness".

Self-acceptance is about how much our inner parts affirm or negate each other. That is, how strong is my inner conflict?

#Self-responsibility refers to whether a person perceives themselves as affected or active – a plaything of external stimuli, or the shaper of one's own feelings.

With awareness, we can break through the split between thinking and feeling and escape a strong "top-heaviness".

Thus, we can become both conscious of previously unconscious elements of ourselves, and at the same time, learn to differentiate our "selves" and our thoughts. This is most likely to succeed with a trained counterpart to help us perceive and name parts of ourselves.

Trustfulness and Trustworthiness

Authors from different generations have vividly examined whether we are fundamentally capable of trust, such as Jeremy Rifkin ("Empathic Civilization") and more recently Rutger Bregman ("Human Kind"). Advances in brain imaging, neuroscientific methods and epidemiological research have made clear that we are much more capable of trust than we sometimes think.

Buy what if we consider trust from the perspective of physical or, increasingly, digital institutions? How sustainable is trust in the context of the digital manipulation of opinion? Cambridge Analytica’s influence over elections via social media is a prime example of this.

In the era of fake news, AI, ChatGPT and wars at our doorstep, our sense of trust can crumble. "Trust is good, control is better" begins to feel more credible. Today, “facts” must be checked: blindly trusting social media would be negligent. 

The complex nature of trust

It cannot simply be claimed that trust is always good for reducing complexity. Especially in the information age, the trustworthiness of easy digital information stands on shaky ground.

At the same time, it is also important to maintain a balance of control and trust in organizations. Because control, for example, in terms of goal achievement, also has an important function: it helps with orientation. Communication plays a crucial role here, so that control doesn’t lead to mistrust.

And as far as gaining self-trust is concerned, pure reason isn’t always the best advisor. Rather, a well-founded approach, based for example on affective and psychodynamic elements, is crucial for self-trust.

Ultimately, the journey to self-trust is not a purely logical one. We cannot “reason” ourselves confident. But we can, however, take a reasonable approach towards it: one where, with support and accompaniment, we learn to better understand – and trust - ourselves.

--This post also appeared as a shorter version on LinkedIn--