In a group setting, one of the hardest things is to encourage open contribution and idea generation.
The fear that can exist to present an idea, a belief or an observation can be significant. With the distribution available online now, this same difficulty is present for a lot of individuals when they want to express online.
Here’s the thing, contribution requires trust and adequate self belief for the level of trust available.
To help create trust between us, we can do a few things:
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What am I actually doing or saying? How am I actually acting, not how do I think I’m acting?
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How do you perceive what I’m doing or saying. This requires empathy, or an understanding of your narrative
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Honesty. We are remarkably good at detecting lies, false information or ulterior motives. If we open with honesty we can often create more trust.
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Giving permission. Interestingly, this works with ourselves as well. We need to both feel that we have permission from others to trust and contribute (despite how silly our idea may be!) and also that we give ourselves permission to speak out.
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Allowing time. Even with all of the above, the fast-paced nature of our engagements can make it difficult for us to trust. We often operate on a “doing” level, which means there is a motive behind a lot of the day. Time can be a powerful tool to allow us to find familiarity or “certainty,” and help break this all down and create trust.
