Trust involves curiosity more than certainty:

This kind of related to my post about the cosmos being more a communion of subjects than a collection of objects.

I mentioned in another post that I’m working with the Art of Alignment (AoA) team in Boulder. This morning it occurred to me just how vital curiosity is to authentic TRUST in all caps, and almost completely missing from the outrage fueled simulacra of trust that is driving almost all media these days, social, mainstream, etc.

I was also reflecting on a business coach who was sick and tired of hearing: Let’s just get aligned everyone! And I agree, just as TRUST isn’t just a decision or a feeling (more like an embodied engagement), ALIGNMENT isn’t just about agreeing to agree.

Ultimately, it’s not really the people who are getting aligned. It is the contextual frames that align, allowing individuals to cohere into a more viable and complexly alive we-self.

There is a weird social geometry or topology that has us basically sweep our concerns and criticisms under the rug if we desire to be aligned with someone, and only bring these concerns out when they are so strong that they can’t be suppressed, and then they come out with a conflictual energy that can trigger a defensive reaction.

In the AoA process, after hearing a proposal (soft, like clay that hasn’t been glazed and fired yet), before we take a hammer to it, we are invited to bring our curiosity in the form of clarifying questions. Get to know what this proposal entails. With curiosity established in a group setting, appreciative inquiry can proceed with complimenting the things I hadn’t seen from my previous fixed viewpoint. Now when I bring my concerns, they aren’t so sharp (don’t feel like criticisms), and can be included in the mix. Next, changes are proposed and considered from a space of openness and cooperative synergy. Finally, from this place of deep collaboration, with all hands having input, there is a request for soft commitment: We’re going to take all of the interaction today into consideration and rework the proposal, and share our update in a similar open form. If we address found issues to your satisfaction when we come back, how committed are you to working on the implementation of this proposal.