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Rebuilding Trust in the Workplace

Saturday, February 19, 2011 - by Dennis Reina, Michelle Reina

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A leader's goals are irrelevant if employees aren't willing to embrace change; if they're not confident, committed, and engaged; and if they don't trust their leaders.

If trust has been broken in your organization - and given the Great Recession, odds are, it has been - you must start now to rebuild it. We recommend a proven seven-step process for healing and rebuilding trust.

This seven-step process provides

an important foundational framework and helps to guide leaders in demonstrating trustworthiness and taking concrete, constructive, and compassionate action:

Observe and acknowledge what has happened. When trust is broken, most people experience the impact as a loss - the loss of what was or what could have been. Tune into how employees are responding to that loss. Acknowledge their experience, listen to what's important to them, and demonstrate that their views matter.
Allow feelings to surface. Provide people with nonthreatening environments to express their feelings and begin to work through them. Focus groups, team meetings, and one-on-one conversations can all be helpful in ensuring that employees' emotions don't go underground.
Get and give support. Help people recognize where they are stuck and how they can shift from blaming to problem solving. Also, make sure that no one is moving ahead blindly. Share key information and insights to help employees feel "in the know." And seek support for yourself, too, perhaps through
fellow leaders, a mentor, or an executive coach.
Reframe the experience. Put the experience into a larger context. Help people to see the bigger picture, such as the business reasons behind a set of decisions, and to consider the individual choices and opportunities now in front of them, including the potential benefits.
Take responsibility. Own up to what is yours to own. Determine the lessons learned and the actions you can take to improve the current situation. Hold yourself accountable, plus help others hold themselves accountable, too.
Forgive yourself and others. Forgiving doesn't mean excusing; it means acknowledging the impact of broken trust and then agreeing not only to move through it but also to learn from it. Ask people, "What needs to happen for forgiveness to take place?" Additionally, ask yourself the same question if you need to forgive yourself.
Help people let go and move on. There is a difference between remembering and "hanging on." Employees may not forget what happened, but they can choose to look forward rather than stay stuck in the past.

According to a Deloitte 2010 Ethics & Workplace Survey, "As many as 65 percent of Fortune 1000 executives believe that 'loss of trust' will be a factor in a potential increase in voluntary employee turnover in the coming months."