Hey everybody. I have one of the best jobs in the world. I get to serve as the Director
of the M. K. Gandhi Institute for Non-Violence and one of the things that that means is that
I get to spend time with U of R students. We attract interns and visitors from all around
the world as a result of our approach to community based non-violence but there’s no people
that I welcome more when I get a group of U of R students rolling up the driveway interested
in finding out what we do. So for moms and dads and grandparents in the room. Good job!
I want to talk to you about trust today. As a student of non-violence, I’m very interested
in how power gets used in the world and as someone who’s very involved in issues related
to our community; I’m very interested in the use of resources and worried at the misuse
of resources that occurs. And one of the things that has really grabbed my interest in the
last years is the issue of trust and I’m beginning to see trust as a potential source
of wealth and a source of power that any of us, no matter what our age, our rank or position
in the world can use and make use of. I’m also interested in trust because I think actually
trust makes for good conflicts and I want people to be able to have conflicts. Non-violence
is a way to conduct conflict. I’m not interested in preventing conflict. Conflict and creativity
are two sides of the same coin. We need to be able to talk about our differences and
our challenges. Otherwise, our human creativity is getting locked down at a time when I believe
and I think probably all of you in this room believe that we need to bring our creativity
on line to deal with some of the issues that we’ve got in front of us. So I want to ask
you a couple of questions. Who here has ever said at a meeting or at a dinner table where
there was a lot of trust going in the group? Anybody? Sat in a room at dinner table at
a meeting or a conference with a lot of trust? I’ve asked that question in a number of
settings and the words that people use to describe that it’s fun, it’s easy and
it’s often really creative. I’ve also sat in settings where trust was absent or
really diminished. Also at dinner tables. Also in meetings. Anybody sat in places like
that? Yeah! And some of the words that people use to describe that is often tense, awkward
and time consuming because the work of minutes can become hours. Deciding anything is like
running your car engine with no oil in it. You can smell the engine burn. So I really
want to invite you to join me in thinking for the next few minutes about trust as an
asset, as a source of wealth and as a source of power. I’ve got a few things that I want
to, that I’ve noticed that actually are really effective in contributing to trust.
One is walking toward conflicts when they’re small. Now I know sometimes we’ve got conflicts
in our lives that go from zero to sixty but I also want to notice that many of us has
issues that go on with the people around us that are small and that build over time because
we don’t attend to them. So one of the things I want you to do is to consider to walk towards
conflicts when they’re small and it could sound something like this: Hey I’ve noticed
that you know we’re not making eye contact with each other the last couple days. Did
I say or do anything that’s troubling you because you matter. I want to know. If someone
tells you, “Yeah, you know, actually Kit you said something to me a few days ago that
sort of stung me.” I take that honesty as a gift and as a choice and as an opportunity
to get feedback because I want to be able to be fearless and I want to be able to move
quickly. If people don’t give me feedback about the results of my words and actions,
how will I ever know and learn. So I thank someone for giving me that feedback and when
people work with me they have learned that actually I’m hungry for that feedback. I
don’t just want to hear the strokes. I want to hear “Hey, this didn’t work”. That
makes us a much more efficient, effective team. We’ve got each other’s backs. Walk
towards conflicts when they’re small and encourage the people around you to do the
same. The other thing I believe is useful in building trust is to remember that all
agreements expire. Every one of them comes stamped with some expiration date. The expiration
date is faster if people weren’t really considering all the ramifications of saying
yes to something or when their conditions in life change or because, like many of us,
are hearts are bigger than our calendars. We want to do something. We say yes to it.
We get home and think that was a really bad idea. So when I notice that some ones not
showing up with an agreement at work or in a community project or at home in the way
I expected them to, I just go check it out with them and I say look, do you need to be
blessed and released from this commitment. Did you bite off more than you can chew? I
want to hear it. Let’s talk about it now and I do that also as an act of care because
I know when I’ve made a commitment that I’m not keeping, it feels like kind of crap
inside. So I want to be able to offer that and you get a couple of responses. One is
people say yes, you know I just found out last week my mom has Alzheimer’s or our
childcare provider quit or I’m just slammed for some other reason. Great. Let’s find
someone else to do this thing or maybe it remains undone. On the other hand many people
say “Oh no, no” “I really want to do it.” “I’m on it.” “I’m on it”
and they sign up again and they do it and they’re excited and they’re grateful because
you checked. You checked and you indicated your care in a very specific way. I want to
also put in a word for one more leadership roles which includes being a parent, to think
about being transparent more often. When we act like we have all the answers, especially
when we’re only pretending, were not supporting anybody. So I want to just say “hey, I don’t
know” when someone asks me a question. “What do you think?” That’s my response more
and more and because most of my staff is in their twenties, I love empowering people between
the ages of nineteen and thirty-one to realize that just cause I am a lot older than them,
it doesn’t mean I have the answers. Be transparent if you’re a leader. Be transparent if you’re
a parent. Maybe that’s why the word parent is in there. I’ve really thought that through
yet. Last thing I want to talk about is anger. I became really interested in anger, over
the years, of course, through the result of my work. And remembering right now actually,
I got a phone call from some schools on September 11th saying “Could you come in and work
with some kids?” “They’re really upset” and I thought what am I going to do and they
said, “Bunches of fourth graders, you’ll have fifteen, twenty minutes with each group
of kids.” So I thought what am I going to do with children September 12th, the day after
those towers came down and I thought I’m going to talk about anger. So I went to the
kids and I said to them, “Look, I want you guys to know something about anger that maybe
even the adults around you don’t know which is that anger is never our first feeling in
my experience. It’s always some other feeling that flashes so quickly that it feels like
anger. In my example that I gave to the kids that day was a little kid runs into the road,
almost gets hit by a car. Mom, grandma, whoever runs grabs and brings him back to the side
of the road and shouts “Don’t ever do that again.” Sound angry but what’s going
on. Yes. Yeah. I want you to get curious about your own anger and the anger of others. That’s
your homework assignment leaving here because my experience, so far, from looking at this
now for years and other cultures as well as United States is that anger is another feeling
that flashes so intensely and it’s important for us to become well equipped and well, I
say even relaxed with our own anger because if we’re able to have the four one one on
our own anger, we’re going to be more useful to other people in doing change work in the
world and especially because a lot of the work that I do now focuses on issues of race
in this hyper-segregated community of Rochester, New York. It’s critical that I don’t need
people to cool down before we can have a conversation. So, I need to be able to relax with people’s
upset. I need to be able to relax with their outrage. “I don’t expect people to become
well-adjusted to a mal adjusted world” as Dr. King said. So I want to be able to sit
with people and roll with that anger and roll with the energy of it. I don’t need somebody
to calm down in order to have a good conversation. It’s an exciting thing actually to be able
to be sort of chill with your own anger and the angers of others because there’s a tremendous
amount of energy in it. Some years ago, in the last five years, Gandhi was listed as
one of the top five world leaders in a survey of Global CEO’s. Not exactly the world’s
most touchy feely group which I found to be really interesting because he wasn’t a man
who had an army at his disposal or money. He died with four objects in his possession.
He didn’t have a government position. What he had was an incredible commitment to his
own journey as a human being and I have an idea that if we become equally committed that
we could also make extraordinary changes on behalf of our species and all the species
in the world. I’m inspired by the fact that Gandhi said “My life is my Message” and
I’m interested in these ideas around trust because I think that they can help all of
us have our lives be a message that we’re proud of. Thank you very much.
Subtitles by the Amara.org community