Filling The Gap: Trust vs. Suspicion

Four Hands by Eastop at sxc.hu

Four Hands by Eastop at sxc.hu

Elders, what do you do when you go by the church office on Tuesday morning and the preacher isn’t there?

Preachers, what do you do when your youth minister isn’t in the office by 10 in the morning?

Husbands, what do you do when you can’t get your wife on her cell phone one evening when you are away on a trip?

Workers, what do you do when a co-worker is late for a meeting?

A gap is created in all of these circumstances.  A mystery, a wandering, a sense of doubt about the other person’s activity.  What you fill in the gap makes a tremendous difference in the culture of your work and home.  You can choose to fill the gap with trust or suspicion.

This is the subject of a Leadership Podcast by Andy Stanley dated April 5, 2013.  It was very good and insightful on this theme.

Here are some of the thoughts from the podcast which I would encourage you to listen to yourself.

Leaders choose to put TRUST in the gap if they want to build an organization based on TRUST.  They also stress to their team to put TRUST in these gaps.

We have a tendency to put SUSPICION in the gap.  Patrick Lencioni, in the book The Advantage, talks about the fundamental attribution error.  ”It is the tendency to attribute the negative or frustrating behaviors of colleagues to their intentions and personalities.”  So if someone does something to create a gap, this error leads us to believe that it is something that is fundamentally wrong with their personality or character.  (He was late because he is lazy.) On the other hand, when we do something to create a gap, we attribute it to environmental issues.  (I am late because traffic was bad.)  You cut yourself slack but not others.

This is so true and is one of the reasons I think there is frequent conflict in the church between church staff and church leaders.  How many times has a preacher and youth minister had conflict  or a preacher been driven off by an over-intrusive elder.

This principle needs to also work in our marriages.  When there is a gap, choose to think the best about the other person.  Choose to trust their character and past trustworthiness.  We do this for ourselves all the time.  When we are late or fail to meet a given deadline, we justify it because we know the reason.  We should choose to trust others, rather than naturally being suspicious and negative.  We cut ourselves some slack, we need to cut others some slack.

When this is practiced by the leaders, this will result in an environment of openness and trust in the church, at work, and in the home.  This will breed greater joy, mutual trust, intimacy, and transparency.

But what about when the person continues to create a gap that is causing you concern and hindering production at work or harming the family environment.  What do you do then; when you have filled the gap with trust multiple times, yet the gap is still continuing to get broader.  I tackle that subject in the next post.

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This post by Mark Bowling transcribes some of the Andy Stanley podcast

Permanent link to this article: https://www.joshketchum.com/filling-the-gap-trust-vs-suspicion/

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  1. This is excellent and wise counsel!

  1. […] « Filling The Gap: Trust vs. Suspicion […]

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