Trust and Insecurity

I've recently finished The Age of Insecurity by Astra Taylor, a book that aims (amongst other things) to take the anxiety so many of us experience and put it into a systemic context of a society that is built on insecurity. As such, our insecurities and anxieties are not individual experiences that should be dealt with on an individual basis, but rather social phenomena that have their roots in the architecture of our economic and political systems, and therefore must be addressed on a larger basis. Good luck meditating away the effects uneven wealth distribution has on your life.

Taylor develops one concept that I found particularly interesting. She calls it "manufactured insecurity", a system designed to artificially create insecurities in jobs to motivate people to perform. In this theory about employee motivation, people respond only to external factors, and mostly to negative ones. This corresponds to "Theory X" in Douglas McGregors dichotomy of employee motivation concepts. In this theory, there are basically two views on employee motivation: "Theory X", which says that "workers are lazy and dumb, and must be presided over by managers", and "Theory Y", that says "people want to be engaged, they want to take ownership, and that they carry the drive for success within themselves."

While you can run an organisation solely on Theory X-thinking, you cannot run an organisation with it that needs creativity and innovation to be successful.

Innovation needs freedom – freedom to think, freedom to experiment, freedom from premature judgement. And contrary to what many people think about freedom and security, they are not opposites, but freedom is the result of security. "The security of having our needs met allows us to have real autonomy and creative agency in the world." says Taylor.

How can we create this security? Taylors answer is what she calls an "Ethic of Insecurity", that acknowledges that existential insecurity comes from being dependent on others for survival and turning that into a strength:

"To be vulnerable and dependent on others is not a burden to escape but the essence of human existence, as well as the basis of what I have called an ethic of insecurity—a potentially powerful source of connection, solidarity, and transformation."

We often talk about the role of trust in teams. But what kind of trust do we actually mean? More often than not, people refer to some kind of professional trust – trusting in open conversations about tough business decisions, or trusting the expertise of a co-worker. Rarely do people talk about a more fundamental kind of trust. But as Patrick Lencioni lays out in his "Five Dysfunctions of a Team", trust in teams is about vulnerability, being "comfortable being open, even exposed, to one another around their failures, weaknesses, even fears."

This kind of trust is what we need to counter "existential insecurity", the knowledge that the human condition is being dependent on others for survival.

And it is this kind of trust that will create the deep, solid security that allows us to experience the freedom needed to truly innovate.

So, to turn back to what motivates people: It's clear that a Theory X-driven organisation will never be able to sustainably, reliably create this kind of freedom needed for innovation and creativity. If people in such an organisation are creative, it is despite management practices, not because of them.

A well-designed working environment tries not to remove this existential insecurity (you cannot), but addresses the Ethic of Insecurity and foster deep, lasting connections between people that go beyond professional relations. That doesn't mean you have to be friends with everyone at work. But it means that you can trust them to always act in your best interest, so that you know you'll be taken good care of, regardless if things go well or not.