Great question, Roberto - "What is the link between trust and
authenticity? Can we have one without the other?" (And thanks for
the rigour of your thinking leading up to the question.)
I think that authenticity is likely the most important missing in the
corporate world that impacts trust. That would account for those
many episodes, designed and otherwise, where trust is built more or
less according to expectations of our theories - and then disappears
in fairly short order when we "return to reality".
Many of us have been part of, designed or observed such events as
outward bound, intimate dialogue and shared experience produce
breakthroughs in levels of trust and relationship. We have seen most
of these degrade seriously and sometimes even become worse than
before.
If we look into the inauthenticity of corporate life, what we find is
not so much the individual lack of morality or responsibility that
might be the source of breakdown of trust. What we find is a system,
an inherited structure, a culture which is based on some groups of
people getting other groups to do things. The performance demands
based on this ability lead to inauthenticity which is rooted in
power, control, manipulation, artificial differences and assessments
of inferiority/superiority in important matters.
An authentic manager is very hard to find even though they are mainly
as genuine, caring, etc as the rest of us as human beings.
And then there are the basic human qualities that have trust at such
low levels in our society that we can hardly put much blame on
corporations.
-- Michael McMaster Michael@kbddean.demon.co.ukLearning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>