I wish to add further to what Gibb has noted about defensiveness and trust. The second set of perspectives and practices are key components of any Polystatic process. If one is to adjust predictions and baselines in response to challenging VUCA-Plus conditions, then the capacity to accurately description what is now occurring is invaluable. A problem-orientation is required that allows for flexible, contingency planning. Most importantly, spontaneity and provisionalism are prerequisites to effective polystatic processes. Finally, regarding the application of Polystasis to interpersonal relationships, we must be empathetic regarding the comparable VUCA-Plus related challenges being faced by other people with whom we interact. They are dancing just as much as we are. It is fully appropriate (perhaps necessary) that we dance together—for we are interacting together on a VUCA-Plus landscape that is not only rugged (complex, ambiguous and contradictory) but also itself dancing (volatile, uncertain, and turbulent) (Miller and Page, 2007; Bergquist, 2020).
Gibb is fully aware of the strong pressures that elicit defensiveness—and threaten mistrust. He lived and worked during a time when evaluation, control strategy, neutrality and certainty were key components of management and superiority was assumed to exist in the role played by management in leading their direct reports. Yet, Jack Gibb believed that Trust can be established and defensiveness can be minimized in a TORI setting. Furthermore, he wrote about the ways in which Trust can meet multiple needs. I would propose that he has specifically addressed needs related to both S² (Home) (security and safety) and O² (Quest) (opportunity and openness).
He first offers a vision of S² realization (Gibb, 1978, p. 14)
“Trust is more than confidence. One dictionary tells us that trust (derived from the German word Trost, meaning “‘comfort”) implies instinctive, unquestioning belief in and reliance upon something. Confidence implies conscious trust because of good reasons, definite evidence, or past experience. Confidence is more cerebral, more calculated, and based more on expectations than trust is. Trust can be and often is instinctive; it is unstrategized and freely given. It is something very much like love, and its presence or absence can make a powerful difference in our lives.”
Gibb’s analysis of setting where Trust does not exist is even more telling with regard to the search for security and safety—and the stirring of defensiveness and alternative modes of security and safety (Gibb, 1978, p. 14):
“As trust ebbs, we are less open with each other, less interdependent, less interbeing – not into each other in deep and meaningful ways; we look for strategies in dealing with each other; we seek help from others; or we look for protection in rules, norms, contracts, and the law. My defenses are raised by my fear that I do not or cannot trust you. The ebbing of trust and the growth of fear are the beginning of alienation, loneliness, and hostility. In a very real sense, we can say that trust level is the thermometer of individual and group health. With it, we function naturally and directly. Without it, we need constraints, supports, leaders, managers, teachers, intervenors, and we surrender ourselves and our lives to them for guidance, management, and manipulation.”
There is the other side of Trust (O² Quest) which Gibb also acknowledges. This side provides liberation rather than safety. It enables us to push outward rather than turn inward (Gibb, 1978, p. 17):
“Trust is a releasing process. It frees my creativity, allows me to focus my energy on creating and discovering rather than on defending. It releases my courage. It is my courage. It opens my processes, so that I can play, feel, enjoy, get angry, experience my pain, be who I am. The full life is a spontaneous, unconstrained, flowing, trusting life. . . . Trust gives me my freedom and my fear takes it away. Freedom comes from my own flow. It is not given to me or taken away from me by others. I create my own mindbody trust, which is my freedom.”
Download Article 1K Club
