OTT Issue #12: Step 1: Don’t Break Trust. If You Miss Step 1, Do This!

After?last week’s edition, in which we talked about the fragility of trust, I got an immediate question: what do I do if trust gets broken??

It’s a fair question that’s also complicated and difficult, which makes it perfect for some off the trail exploration. But before we get into reconstruction suggestions, I want to reiterate a key point from last week:?

Rebuilding trust is HARD. It’s far better to not break it in the first place.?

Most professional relationships start with an expectation that people will uphold general workplace standards. There are times when “general workplace standards” mean very different things to different people, but for the most part we don’t approach a new colleague with our eyes peeled for some immediate malfeasance.?

Do what you say you’ll do, and things will stay at that baseline trust level. That’s definitely the recommended best practice.??

But, if you DO end up at the bottom of that particular hill, it’s a journey that needs careful planning and diligent attention; this is not a casual stroll you can take while catching up on your podcast backlog.?

Sadly, there’s no magic recipe that will fix trust. But there are some tried-and-true tactics that will help.?

1. Speak or let it go.?Everyone involved needs to be committed to articulating their issues. No silent stewing is allowed. Especially in virtual working environments, you can’t expect people to pick up on all of your non-verbal cues and decipher how you’re feeling. Your choices are to either clearly verbalize what’s going on in your head or stop worrying about it altogether. Likewise, you can’t rely on a third party intermediary to run interference between you and the person whose trust is broken. You have to learn to communicate effectively with them in a one-on-one situation, otherwise you'll be trapped in a never-ending game of telephone that has no chance of repairing your fractured trust.?
2. Embrace accountability.?If you’re the breaker of trust, you have to own up to your mistake with no excuses. None. Zero. Zilch. No qualifiers or explanation of the extenuating circumstances that led to the current state of brokenness. There might very well be all kinds of reasons it happened. Some of them might even be legitimate. But none of those matter when people’s trust has been betrayed. When you pull any reasons out of your hat during a phase of trust rebuilding, people don’t hear evidence to exonerate you. All they hear is an unwillingness to be accountable for your actions. That’s not moving you down the path back toward mutual trust.?
3. Commit to consistency.?You can break trust in a matter of minutes. Sometimes it only takes a few seconds. But building it back is a much longer process. Think of it like this: trust was an intricate stone bridge connecting you and the other person. In professional relationships, you get to start with it pretty much already built, so it’s easy to take it for granted. When trust is broken, that whole bridge comes down. To get it back, you’ve got to put every single one of those stones back in place, one by one. It’s a long, painstaking process, and you can very easily bring the whole thing crumbling down again with one tiny misstep. So you’ve got to be committed to sticking with the process of rebuilding for a very long time.?

And while your consistent, trust-building behavior should be on display at all times, you need to prioritize one on one conversations with the object of your efforts. Wherever possible, let them set the agenda and focus on listening. Ask lots of questions, and generally use that time to develop a deeper understanding of their perspective.?

All of this probably sounds like a whole lot of work, both practical and emotional. And that’s because it is.?

You might be asking yourself whether it’s even worth doing. Chances are there are people in your professional life whose trust doesn’t seem all that critical right now.?

But if we hang on to the bridge analogy for a minute, consider how many connections you’re missing if you’ve allowed trust to crumble at work. If you need to cross a river or chasm to get to where you want to be, but there aren’t any bridges anymore, you’re stuck where you are.?

You can’t even invite people over to your side because there’s no way for them to get there. That’s a siloed, lonely, frustrating way to work.?

Plus there’s no way to predict who you’ll need and when. And since trust takes so long to reestablish, you can’t just throw together a bridge at the last minute.?

Think about it: if I’m asking you to come over to my side of the canyon, but you need to use a rickety bridge with broken planks and fraying rope to get there, are you going to rush to cross? I’m guessing no.?

So, let’s recap:

Step 1: Don’t break down your trust bridge at all.?

If you didn’t know about Step 1 and already smashed the bridge, be prepared to put in some hard labor to rebuild it. Even metaphorical bridges are tricky.?

- Andrea