WHAT ? TRUST !! CULTIVATE IT .. !! DO NOT BETRAY .... !!

Today I want to talk about "TRUST" - trust: the power when it exists, the pain when it’s betrayed, and the transformation that occurs when it’s been renewed. My purpose in writing this is to is to help people at all levels—not just leaders—of any organization to create, support, and, if necessary, rebuild trust within themselves and with others.

This writeup is about creating more productive, engaging, and rewarding work environments for everyone. It’s about relationships that are built on trust and infused with spirit—relationships that inspire leaders and employees alike. The principles, tools, and techniques offered for - Trust and Betrayal in the Professional and Personal life apply to anyone, in any kind of relationship, at any level of responsibility, and in any kind of setting—both at work and at home.

More than ever, there is a need for trust in workplace relationships.Organizations and people face increasing challenges; some associated with growth and expansion, others with downsizing or restructuring. Although change and transition have become commonplace, our need for trust-based relationships endures. Why?

Because of one simple truth: business is conducted through relationships and trust is the foundation of effective relationships.

Trust builds the bridge between the business need for results and the human need for connection.

Trust is foundational to how you bring yourself to your work and your relationships. Yet, trust is fragile. It takes time to develop, is easy to lose, and is hard to regain. Countless numbers of people in the workplace today suffer from the loss of trust.

In fact, after decades of constant change—years of downsizing, restructuring, and reengineering, or of mergers and growth— trust among people at every organizational level is needed more than ever.

You’re not immune to this reality. You’ve personally felt the pain of breached trust from minor letdowns and disappointments. You may even have suffered a major betrayal by another’s self-serving action. Unmet expectations, letdowns, broken trust, and even betrayals crop up every day on the job. The hard truth is, these situations impact your performance and the performance of your colleagues.

You can counteract this downward spiral of broken trust and diminished effectiveness by learning to trust more in yourself and others. You can develop caring, genuine relationships based on mutually trustworthy intentions. You can benefit from inspired collaboration, improved performance, and a renewed ability to find joy in your relationships—both at work and at home. You can do these things.

Trust begins with you.

Everyone should have the desire to cultivate trusting relationships with the people with whom they work and live. You may feel that your workplace has a fairly healthy level of trust and you want to build upon it because you know it will give you and your colleagues a competitive edge in the marketplace. Or you may see signs that trust is vulnerable in your organization.The “grapevine” may be in overdrive, relationships may be breaking down, people may not be following through on their commitments, climate survey results may be less than desirable, and people may be leaving the company. Your instincts may be telling you that “something is just not quite right” in your work environment.

My focus is for anyone at any level of responsibility who values relationships and wants to understand what trust means— how it’s built, how it’s broken, and how it may be rebuilt in order to create more effective connections. We find that people want trust; they just aren’t sure how to go about fostering it. For many, building trust—and more importantly rebuilding it—may seem like an overwhelming task. Here, we help you, and we help you learn how to help those around you.

There is need to explore the specific behaviors that build trusting relationships, pinpoint the behaviors that contribute to subtle and not-so subtle breaches of trust, and explain the actions you can take to learn to trust again. Trust and Betrayal in the Workplace will help you understand and appreciate the complex dynamics of trust and betrayal. Your understanding of trust will be improved—as will your awareness of the variety of ways betrayal occurs and its consequences.

Understanding the complexity of trust and betrayal is challenging work, yet necessary. We draw upon what we have learned firsthand from life experience, years of research, and work with thousands of people in hundreds of organizations around the world.

The topic of trust is emotionally charged and means different things to different people. The Model which I provide here is an understandable framework for you to work through this complexity. I am trying to make make trust concrete and actionable for you by giving you a common language to discuss trust-related issues and act on them in a thoughtful manner. You’ll learn to use this language to create and take action to maintain healthy levels of trust in your organization.

Trust Begins with You. This perspective establishes that people want trust, need trust, and deserve trust. I address trust’s importance by exploring the business and human need for it; the price people and organizations pay when it’s low; and the payoff when it’s high. I would like to clarify that in order to get trust, people must be willing to give it. Trust begins with the individual effort put forth by each one of us.

Trust begins with you.

The Three Cs of Trust —

Trust of Character,

Trust of Communication, and

Trust of Capability.

I would like to discuss the specific behaviors that build each type of trust and bring these actions to life through examples and vignettes culled from my last two decades of practical work experience and field research.

Your Readiness and Willingness to Trust,- helps you explore your readiness and willingness to trust in yourself and others. Because trust begins with you, it’s vital you develop this understanding of your own Capacity for Trust.

How You Trust - takes you on a deeper exploration of how, when, and why you trust through the lens of four powerful questions. In all relationships, trust will be built and trust will be broken.

With trust comes betrayal. How Trust Is Broken: Betrayal ?!

I feel like discussing the word betrayal and share why it’s important that you understand it. I talk about the big things as well as the subtle, unintentional, day-to-day occurrences that cause people to feel their trust has been broken. We explore the impact of these betrayals to individuals, relationships, and performance.

How Trust Is Rebuilt?!

This question takes you through proven steps to overcome the disappointment and pain of betrayal and learn to trust again.

How Trust Is Transformed: Transformative Trust ?!

This quuestion examines the four catalysts that help you create Transformative

Trust: conviction, courage, compassion, and community. How they work, their value, and how you can amplify trust within your individual relationships, your team, and your organization.

How to take Trust to the Higher Level in an organisation ?!

This question takes you on an inner journey through four pathways to deepen your relationship with yourself. This will remove the barriers that stand between you and building more trust in your relationships. Trust begins with you. Your relationship with yourself is foundational to how you bring yourself to others, both at work and at home.

Throughout worklife even life build trust.

It takes time to design and develop teams, manage change, strengthen leadership credibility, and build managerial strategies. Leaders and colleagues would ask me us to help them understand why their development efforts were not producing results. When I reached out to their people for insight, again and again we would hear that lack of results were due to the breakdown of trust—a breakdown of trust among co-workers, with bosses, in teams, and throughout the organization.

I went on a search for solutions. Being an academician I committed to studying elements of trust in my students and colleagues. I learned a great deal about trust and how central it is in relationships and organizations. I was, however, left with more questions than answers. My quest continued.

The next phase was my book to be published soon on the topic - my research brought us to sixty-seven organizations in nineteen industries. We learned that it was not possible for people to talk about trust without talking about betrayal and the need to recover from it. The outgrowth of these formative academic years of work experience and research gave birth to the the Model, which served as the framework for the book. The purpose of the book was to provide a working construct of trust, betrayal, and rebuilding trust. The book was an expansion with a focus on helping leaders, in particular, learn to trust themselves and others more as they led organizations in a dynamic, complicated marketplace. Since the writing of this book, the cries for a trusting workplace have become louder and louder. I have listened and have dug even deeper to understand all aspects of trust.

Hands-on experience of the organizations I have worked and the research withthousands of leaders, managers, supervisors, human resource professionals, and front-line employees in a multitude of functions have taught me that although leaders do have significant responsibility to cultivate a culture of high trust, they do not have 100 percent responsibility. Each and every individual has responsibility for his or her part in building trust within their relationships throughout their organization. Trust begins with you. Trust begins with each and every one of us.

We all have experiences of trust and betrayal. In our service to organizations, we continue to learn about trust. What we’ve learned from our clients and our lives is to be observed and analysed. Your personal stories need to be shared.

Your interest in trust should be passionate. Your professional lives should be devoted to supporting the cultivation of trust in relationships of your professional as well as personal life. We believe that all human beings deserve to trust in themselves and to feel safe to trust in others. And continue work to that end.