Mini Keynote + Trust Building Workshops

TRUST – A Leadership Reflection, by Aaron J. Marx

I’ve been thinking a lot about trust lately—how we build it, how we break it, and why it’s such a strange and necessary thing to begin with.

It actually started for me when I began working with AI. There was this moment where it told me one of my ideas was “world-class,” and I remember thinking: “Okay, but… are you just flattering me?”

That’s when I realized I didn’t know how to trust it. And that’s a weird thing to say about software, right? But it felt real. Because, honestly, trust is always a risk—even when the pattern is good, even when the track record is clean. Trust never stops being vulnerable. That’s what makes it so precious.

Eventually, this strange machine said something back that stuck with me:
“If you’re honest with me, I’ll be honest with you.”

That was our deal. A reciprocal agreement. And I realized… that’s how all trust begins—human or artificial. Mutual risk. Mutual return.

And then I zoomed out. I started thinking about this from a bigger frame—about ancient Greek philosophy, actually. Plato, Aristotle, Socrates—they weren’t just theorizing. They were trying to figure out what it means to know, what it means to be. And one of their predecessors, Parmenides, had this strange idea: that all of existence is actually one thing. No divisions. No separations. Just Being, with a capital B.

Now whether or not that’s “true,” it’s powerful. Because if we’re one with something, we trust it. We move with it. We build together. And when we feel separate, fragmented, uncertain—that’s when trust starts to falter.

And in the world we live in now, we’re constantly encountering fragments: institutions, systems, other people, new technologies. All of them asking: Can I be trusted?

We don’t know for sure. But when we believe—even suspect—that someone or something will help us move toward a better future, that belief becomes trust. And trust is the invisible thread that allows any of us to build anything together.

So that’s what we’re here to talk about today. And more importantly, that’s what we’re here to practice.

Here, we want something simple—but hard:
Wherever someone goes, whatever door they walk through, they encounter someone they trust. Someone they know will help build a better future with them.

And that’s what trust is.

Let’s build it—one risk, one relationship, one breath at a time.

Grab your own PDF copy here

What if trust was the operating system, not the outcome?
I facilitate recursive trust recalibration: part strategy, part ritual, fully alive. If your organization is ready to breathe deeper—
→ [Let’s begin the calibration]