When do you feel okay to be your Best Self? What is needed to make you feel comfortable? To open up and be vulnerable to others and present your Best Self and, with that, what is not your Best?

The answer: When you are amongst people that you feel safe with. You see and feel trust. That any of your vulnerability will not be used against you.

Organisations want to perform Best. Best People working in the Best Teams to bring the customers the Best Result. All in the Best Well-Being. Therefore a lot of initiatives take place. Team building sessions, we change the ways of working in Agile, Lean, etc. And we set our values and behaviours.

Does this lead to trust? Do you see people opening up, being vulnerable about what is their Best Self and what they find difficult to do?

The basis of a Best Team that delivers Best Result is trust. Trust is something you can not set or ask people to give you. Nor is it a behaviour and can you simply say: You can trust me! Even though you are a trustworthy person, this does not lead to trust.

What does lead to trust then? What is needed to create an environment in which people are opening up? Dare and want to be vulnerable? Honestly and purely showing who they are in their full personal potential?

The only thing you can do to be perceived as trustworthy, is show that people can trust you. Act as a trustworthy organisation and person by being open and vulnerable yourself. Say what you feel and ask for feedback. And constantly treat others with respect, honesty and loyalty. Precisely the way you want them to behave and do. Then people start trusting you. After that they will open up. They feel trusted and it is okay to be vulnerable and bring the Best Self.

Going back to people and organisations. The harder organisations say and try that you have to act, do or behave in a certain way (“Our values” and “Behaviours” on the wall and in appraisal processes, ways of working, team building sessions and collaboration programs), without seeing trust in role models around them, the less you create trust.

No matter what you do; Without trust, people do not completely open up. Without completely opening-up, people can not be vulnerable and open about their Best Self and what they find difficult.

People act out of their defend mechanism. “Trust no one”, hiding their Best Self.

Click here to learn more about activating Best Self, work in the Best team and bring Best Result in the Best Well-Being. This gives trust.