Distrust

by Gorb 5 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  Gorb

  Since the begin of this millennium, when I became Pimo on the way to Pomo, I started higher education and made some promotion that lead to a higher management position.

  I'm a regional manager now, acting in a management team and stakeholder manager.

  In this position, we do intense feedback, coaching trajects et cetera, that goes under the waterline.

  A issue I have to deal with is distrust. I made an analyse of myself and found out that I don't trust the intentions of many of my stakeholders.

  I want to do something about this, to become a better person and making further progression.

  Could it be JW upbringing related? (I think yes!)

  Do you recognize this issue?

  Did you find a way out?!?

  I have the intention to go into therapy. Do you have some advise what helped you?

  Gorby, better then ever, and always searching for personal growth.
• 

  no-zombie

  Hi Gorby,

  from my experience most professional people in the world are just trying to find their place in it. Yeh, I grant you that there are a lot of super-sized egos out there, but few who would deliberately stab you in the back. That being said, industries who measure people's working performance though KPIs (as compared to task competences) might be more susceptible to that kind of behavior.

  my two cents worth.
  
• 

  AtLeastImNot

  I was not raised JW and I only spent about five or six years as a witness. My distrust comes from working in retail. Everyone was out to screw you , from the customers to your team members to your colleagues. From the customers, I have seen every scam in the book. The associates I managed were actually hilarious in their attempts to scam me or pull the wool over my eyes. I respected the honest ones . One texted me to say she wouldn’t be to work because she was still drunk from last night. However, you seem to be a business professional, not a retail manager, so people may behave differently..

  I don’t know what your work environment is so I really don’t know what to say to help, because I do distrust people now. I was way too trusting before my retail career. Anyway, congratulations on your high-level job.
• 

  LauraLynn

  Gorb

  Yes, I think the JW experience can leave us all pretty jaded about people's motives. But like anything, there should be an avoidance of going to extremes on one side of the ditch or the other--from distrusting everyone and their intentions to the other extreme of being overly trusting of fallible people. It sounds like you feel you are toward the distrust extreme and it is hindering your effectiveness as a manager.

  I don't know where you are spiritually, but the bible is quite honest about the human heart's propensity toward self-centeredness, and therefore instructs us not to place our entire trust in man, but rather instructs us to place our entire trust in God, who as God, has perfect integrity. In light of this, that wisdom helps me consider a person's overall character--are they themselves trustworthy, are they hard workers, are they conscientious, etc. Like AtLeastImNot says, actions speak louder than words, and they respected the people that were honest and I'm assuming granted them a level of trust not available to the employees who acted like fools.

  For me a big help in overcoming extreme distrust was forgiving people that have hurt me, and recognizing that "to err is human, to forgive divine." I think deep down my distrust of other people was rooted in the fear that if I could let myself be hurt or misled by another person that there was something wrong with my ability to judge correctly--I blamed it on myself--I kept questioning my own judgement. It seems my inclination is to remember all the times I get it wrong, and not the times I get it right.

  Anyway, I don't know if any of this helps you or not, but it has helped me to have a more balanced view of other people, and myself for that matter.
• 

  Gorb

  @lauralinn & others, thanks for the advise. This is a real help for me, and a start to overthink the issues amd the fact that I can make other choices.

  Thx!!

  Gorby
• 

  Balaamsass2

  Trusting or Gullible? Hard to differentiate. :)

  For the first 40 years of my life MOST poor decisions on my part were from being TOO trustful. I tended to believe most people. Including Employers, the government, Watchtower and JW Elders. lol.

  I like Ronald Regans use of the common Russian saying. "Trust but verify". "Trust, but verify (Russian: доверяй, но проверяй, romanized: doveryay, no proveryay, IPA: [dəvʲɪˈrʲæj no prəvʲɪˈrʲæj]) is a Russian proverb, which rhymes in Russian. The phrase became internationally known in English after Suzanne Massie, a scholar of Russian history, taught it to Ronald Reagan, then president of the United States, who used it on several occasions in the context of nuclear disarmament discussions with the Soviet Union."