Similarities and Trust

As noted in Chapter Two, research in the field of social identity theory confirms that despite our advancement in many ways, we are at heart still quite tribal.5 This does not mean that we cannot build trust across tribes; it merely means that people with whom we can “identify” or whom we see as similar to us in some fashion have an advantage in gaining our trust—deserved or otherwise.

In the best and most high-trust organizations, great attention is paid to creating bonds of trust that go well beyond the impersonal contractual approaches noted in the preceding section. Instead, trust is built by focusing on personnel issues, including careful recruitment and selection of employees, professional training, and active culture building, all of which can help ensure reliable patterns of behavior in even the very highest risk situations.