AC4’s Beth Fisher-Yoshida in HuffPost: The Barbarism of Power in the Workplace and the Evolutionary Nature of Trust

Companies often talk to their employees about teamwork and building relationships, yet suffer from a lack of collegiality in the workplace. Organizations rely on their people to be explicitly united in a common purpose, toward a common goal and to respect each other’s abilities to work toward that purpose. However, this is not often the case. The lack of trust in the workplace causes staff members to feel threatened and insecure and in these instances they look for allies because there is strength in numbers. Aligning with others gives us power just like in pre-state societies when band-level organization required numbers to defeat enemy tribes. Unfortunately, this can cause factions to form and these dynamics can lead to fostering a climate of finger pointing and blame…