Given that my French is still very limited, I spend a lot of time these days practising conversations in my head and working out ways to phrase what I want to say using my limited vocabulary. This is a strategy that works brilliantly, I find, right up to the point where I’ve used my practiced phrase and the person I’m speaking to responds. At that point, my strategy tends to fall apart, and I become a quivering mime artist. C’est la vie, as we say in France.
Anyway, the other day, I found myself mentally preparing for a conversation in which I envisaged using the word ‘confidence’.
“Ah”, I thought. “I know the word for confidence; it’s ‘confiance’.”
“Are you sure?”, asked my inner voice. Which was ironic, I thought.
My confidence broken, I checked Google Translate, which told me that ‘confiance’ actually means ‘trust’.
Confused, I looked up the French word for confidence. The answer popped up: ‘confiance’.
So, it turns out that, in French, confidence and trust are the same word. Which got me thinking. In English, the two words appear to have separate meanings, but, of course, when you think about it, they don’t really.
For self-confidence, surely, is trust in ourselves? Trust that we can complete a task, succeed or overcome challenges, for example.
And what is confidence in others if not to trust in their abilities, principles and values, amongst other things?
It’s no coincidence that whenever we talk about any of the topics we’ve been writing training materials around for more than 20 years, whether that’s leadership, remote team management, negotiation skills, communication skills, equal opportunities, the word trust invariably comes up.
Trust is fundamental to our ability to perform as individuals and to work effectively with others. We cannot have confidence in ourselves or in others, without trust. And when trust is broken, so is our confidence.
So, with that in mind, I thought I’d draw your attention to some of my favourite training modules that focus on trust directly, or indirectly:
A simple activity the considers the destructive power of suspicion.
An interesting way to explore the role trust plays in leadership
A teambuilding game that looks at silo mentality and how much more effective organisations can become when teams work together.
A story-based activity that looks at the impact our behaviour has on that of others.
A negotiation skills activity where participants will find it much easier to reach agreement if they work together in an atmosphere of trust.
A teambuilding game in which the facilitator undermines participants’ trust in one another.
An activity that takes participants from distrust and revolution to trust and resolution.
One of my favourites, this is a simple, quick, powerful activity where success requires having some faith in the other players.
There are, of course, a lot more, so if you’ve some training to develop that requires trust, or an exploration of trust, you can have confidence that we’ll have something to suit your needs. (See what I did there?)
Don’t hesitate to get in touch if we can help.
Until next time…
** Link to remote delivery version but face-to-face version available.
* Face-to-face only.