Crafting a relational agreement for every relationship that matters is good business
This last week I commenced working with two wonderful teams to support the implementation of the Trust Manifesto.
The purpose of this work is to design relational agreements for their teams and clients that are lived, and in the process to reduce the amount of time spent managing issues, cleaning up people issues, and needing to keep people accountable.
Along with the Trust Manifesto design and implementation is the development of the steward leader, supporting them to reach the place where;
- They are their word.
- No means no.
- They are superb at managing expectations and refusing to be seduced by assumptions they have not clarified.
I have learned through decades of experience in this space, that when we give most people a context for agency, responsibility and accountability wrapped in a shell of dignity, respect and alignment, they will seize the threads of accountability, and thrive.
Leaving us, as the steward leaders, the opportunity to focus on strategy and the vision.
Being our word, setting clear and lived boundaries and teaching people who join our team in advance of joining what the boundaries are and the consequences for violating those boundaries, and managing expectations, sounds easy.
But when we wrap our leadership in frames of wanting to be nice, liked, valued, and seen to be across everything, we often fall down in our commitment and follow through.
Saying no and meaning no is a life skill. For leaders, parents, lovers and friends.
Why do we find it so hard?
Crafting a relational agreement – a Trust Manifesto – for every relationship that matters, is good business. Good for everyone.
Living the Trust Manifesto is to evolve our leadership, parenting, partnering.
Just an FYI – I am working on the book, Dictionary for a Syntropic World.
This is the first draft of the page on what is a Trust Manifesto.
How do we create ecologies of high trust? Cultures where self and collective accountability are designed into the architecture? Where people nominate what they want to be responsible for? Where individuals are invited to bring their whole selves to the project or venture, yet also agree to work collaboratively? Where we know that working together produces exponentially greater outcomes than working alone? And where everyone working on the project grow in their emotional, spiritual, intellectual, physical, skills and experience development?
Where we hold a purpose that is clear. Around the movement towards that purpose, we gather.
Where the idea that has been animated to bring that purpose to life has unique elements, values, and particularities called its Pattern Integrity that must never be violated, no matter what the context, environmental conditions, or events that occur.
A Trust Manifesto aims to achieve all of these points and more.
It places human relationships, and relationships between humans, our Earth and her creatures, as central to everything we do.
To begin to craft a Trust Manifesto begin to tell the truth about what you are creating, and why, for whom? What matters most of all? What do we do when things go wrong or stall? How do we manage upset and disagreement? How do we manage multiple domains of value, including money? How will we know if something central to our existence has been violated? What are the checks and balances in place if leadership goes rogue?
Even for the smallest project or human relational dynamic, some version of the Trust Manifesto is essential. It states in its implementation that the humans working on this project matter and that the relationship between the project team is where the integrity of the project lies. The relationships enable the project to be a stable system, fully able to operate in emergence, chaos and complexity.
April 6th 2025
Download the Syntropic Trust Manifesto here.
