The previous set of principles contained in the 5P-Formula looked like this:
The Principles*
Love yourself the same way you Love others
Love others the same way you Love yourself
If you don’t or can’t Love, Respect yourself and others
Love does not come before Respect. Respect comes before Love
Honesty above Cowardice
Respect above Justice
Honesty above Respect, or else it’s not Respect at all
Respect above your Freedom
Honesty above Love
Trust First
Honesty above Trust
*These Principles cannot be taken apart and used separately as you please or as it fits you at that moment (because then you will go break one or more of the other principle(s)).
Now the new set of principles look like this:
The Principles*
Love yourself the same way you Love others
Love others the same way you Love yourself
If you don’t or can’t Love, Respect yourself and others
Love does not come before Respect. Respect comes before Love
Honesty above Cowardice
Respect above Justice
Honesty above Respect, or else it’s not Respect at all
Respect above your Freedom
Honesty above Love
Trust above Respect, or else it’s not Respect at all
Trust First
Honesty above Trust
*These Principles cannot be taken apart and used separately as you please or as it fits you at that moment (because then you will go break one or more of the other principle(s)).
It is not a change that changes anything in the balance of the principles. The thing is that I was under the impression that not only with the 11 first principles this last addition should’ve been logical for everyone, but I also thought that no one would ever believe that you can be (or act) respectful with someone without you having (any) trust in that person. I had to revise my thoughts on this, when I met several people in a short time frame close to each other, who openly said they always act respectful (and professional) to everyone, while also openly telling (around) that they don’t trust (some) people that they need to work closely together with on a day-to-day basis.
Let there be no misconception, if you don’t trust someone, you can never be respectful to them. Doesn’t exist, as the maximum you’ll be able to do is act civilized with each other. Being civilized to someone does not directly mean you also have respect for that person, and there’s always full lack of respect when there’s no trust behind the civilized act. A “recent” example and social demonstration of this fact can be found in the period in the US when colored Americans lived segregated a long the white Americans. There was overall civility between the different groups of Americans, but there was no trust and thus no respect between members of the different groups. Interestingly, even in the groups of white Americans there were of course people who did trust people of color and did not participate or tried to not participate as much as possible in the disrespect of their colored American peers. I believe that without members of the dominant group in a society realizing the injustice happening and start working with people from the non-dominant group in societies, fundamental societal change cannot happen.
That is why I also believe that ideologies like for example Malcolm X believed in, won’t ever work on the long term, because what the non-dominant group in such cases can achieve in the short term is “re-oppressing” the dominant group through show of aggression to be accepted as equals in society, but oppressing people never work. Sooner or later there comes a moment where the oppressed group feels strong enough to fight for their freedom of movement and freedom of thought, and so if you merely achieved a group of people to accept your thoughts and terms, but haven’t achieved for them to agree to your point of view and making them revise theirs too, then you can hope that along the way it still happens, but you need to expect push back and even revolt from people who feel they’re being oppressed.
If you respect someone you will tell them (in their face) anything and everything they need to hear for them to do a better job at work or become better people in life overall. If you don’t trust them, you won’t do that and in the case when you’re working with each other, you’ll only start communicating the bare minimum or just start lying or for example playing down things to not create friction or moments that you’ll need to keep communicating with each other even more. That is way organizations that uses the 5P-Formula stimulate absolute honesty between its team members. Organizations that encourages and especially rewards openly civilized voicing of distrusts between team members, and that show that positive actions are taken every time to ensure trust between the team members gets restored have the best chance to cultivate the needed resilience to overcome all obstacles that the market throws at them.
Trust is essential. Yet, many people in their day-to-day interactions with other people do things that undermine the trust people put in them. If you lie to someone, however small that lie may be, you’re not showing respect to that person, and you’re also showing that you don’t have enough trust in that person to give them the/your truth. This means that being honest with someone is essential for creating trust between you. Even honestly telling someone you don’t trust them enough to tell them something or to go do something with them, is you being more respectful to them, than lying to them that you can’t tell them something, don’t remember something, or that you cannot go do something with them when in fact you can and just don’t want to. It is not your responsibility to please someone who gets offended by your honesty, but it’s your full responsibility to amend the trust broken when someone finds out you lied to them. In most cases, someone who gets offended by your honesty cannot stay offended for long (without being a hypocrite), but someone whose trust gets broken by a lie you told, can carry that distrust towards you for a long time while in essence being totally justified for carrying that distrust with them.
Every human being on this planet starts from the bottom and needs to crawl themselves up. The only difference is that everyone starts from a different elevation in their life journey. That is why for example it is: Respect above Justice, because you need to read and interpret this as (your sense of) Respect above (your sense of) Justice in the way you deal with people. Someone that was born on a high societal elevation who gets in an altercation with someone that was born on a lower societal elevation, could feel that they are the ones who have been unjustly treated by the other and take actions into their own hands and “use their network or influence” to (financially or emotionally) hurt the other, but two unjustifiable acts don’t make one justified act. It then keeps being that two people committed unjustified actions towards each other. Even when it’s emotionally hard, you are in charge of yourself to make sure to never be the one committing unjustifiable acts towards another person.
With the principles contained in the 5P-Formula it’s the same thing, to be able to adhere to every principle, you need to be able to work towards mastering the principles from the bottom up. The ones people think is the easiest and the ones they also want to adhere the most to are the ones from the top going down, with the hardest to adhere to is the one at the bottom going up. But because most people can’t adhere to the one at the bottom, they are only best in adhering to the first part of the top principle (Love yourself), the second part (the same way you Love others), is where most have difficulties adhering to, even when they say they (try their best to) live like that.
I created the 5P-Formula because as a management consultant I needed a framework to work with organizations, which in the end became also a framework that each person can incorporate in their own lives. Which in essence ultimately makes sense, as an organization consists of individuals working together and you can try to improve an organization from the top down, but the best organizations make sure every team member, from the bottom up are being great contributors to the overall health of the organization.
So as an individual would you trust telling your team members the things about their decisions you have issues trusting, or even dare to tell the people directly that you have trust issues with them?
As an organization, is there a culture cultivated wherein everyone is free to voice their distrusts openly about other team members or company decisions, without negative repercussions that can be expected (from peers or upper management)?
I leave you with these two questions for you to ponder on. Feel free to leave a question or give your comment on this topic in the comments below the blog!
