My father was a fox
My friend Leor told me this story:
There was this dog. He was a nice enough dog. But one winter, his human owner kicked him out. There just wasn’t enough food for the dog.
Times were different back then, and the dog couldn’t show up at the SPCA. So, the dog went into the forest and tried to make it on his own. The going was tough, until the dog met a bear. This was one old bear, and it didn’t take a doctor to see that the bear wasn’t long for this world. The bear was lonely, and when he saw the dog he shouted over to him. He got right to the point: “Come keep me company. I don’t have a long time to live. I can see you’re cold, so when I die, you can have my skin and keep yourself warm.”
The dog figured this wasn’t a bad bargain, so he agreed, and for the next couple of days the bear and the dog sat around shooting the breeze. When the bear passed away, the dog donned his coat.
Much warmer, the dog was able to survive the winter. In the spring, the dog met a fox, who was stuck in a trap. “If you help free me,” said the fox, “I’ll give you my tail.” The dog agreed and now was wearing a bear’s coat and a hat fashioned out of fox’s tail.
Wouldn’t you guess, right about then the dog meets a bird with a problem. They make a deal that the bird give the dog feathers with which to decorate his hat.
Now, pretty soon people start talking about sightings of this mystical creature in the woods. It has the coat of a bear, the head of a fox, the beauty of a bird… The mayor of the town is intrigued and calls for the creature to be brought to him.
After a couple of days, the dog appears before the mayor. “What kind of creature are you?” asks the mayor.
“Well,” says the dog, “My mother was a great bear!”
“Yeah, but what kind of creature are you?”
“My father,” says the dog without missing a beat, “is a wise fox.”
“Yeah, but what are you?”
“My cousin is a beautiful bird.”
“Yes, but what creature are you???”
“Me, well, I’m a dog.”
* * *
I’ve participated in Stanford’s Interpersonal Dynamics (otherwise known as “touchy-feely”) course. In the course, twelve MBA students gather in a circle. There’s no set agenda. There’s a facilitator, but really no one’s in charge. People initially want to talk about their job history, or about their ambitions. But the norms in the circle are that you talk about your genuine feeling and observations. You’d think that MBAs, of all people, would run away from this type of interaction. But the class is actually the most popular offering in the school.
I think the reason is that when you can’t talk about your accomplishments, or your ancestry, or whatever, you’re forced to talk about yourself. There’s just something more honest in that. With the honesty comes a level of community and trust. And that’s what a lot of people crave.
Sitting in meetings, I sometimes think of Leor’s story. I hear myself talk about where I went to school, what projects I worked on, or upcoming engagements. It strikes me that these kinds of conversations serve some purpose, but they don’t reveal much about ourselves. More importantly, they don’t build trust.
Trust is fundamentally an emotion. It’s derived from feeling comfortable with someone. It’s this level of trust—of people being themselves—that makes us want to join communities like www.couchsurfing.com, or contribute to our local church, or add a Wikipedia entry.
More and more, trust is becoming a key factor of business. Makes me want to talk less about my father the fox.