Developing, Maintaining and Restoring Trust in the Workplace: Part 1

I once attended a prestigious training on workplace systems design that boiled down to one key message: trust is an essential component to developing and sustaining productive workplaces.

But what happens when trust in the workplace is broken?  The truth is that establishing and maintaining trust in the workplace is the result of consistent and repetitive efforts.  There is no magic bullet or dramatic quick fix.  And where trust has been broken, we have to take an honest look at the reasons why before slowly and consistently working to right the workplace wrongs.

As a workplace mediator and facilitator, I routinely walk into situations where trust has been broken in the workplace.  While these breakdowns are challenging, they also represent a tremendous opportunity to set things right.  Whether the trust breakdown is due to poor communication, bad attitudes, toxic workplace culture or ineffective leadership, repairing trust in the workplace can and should become a priority in order to help the workplace function going forward.

In her book Rising Strong, Dr. Brene Brown summarizes her research about trust in the form of a helpful acronym: BRAVING.  Each letter corresponds to a critical element of trust, an element that needs to exist in order for trust to exist in a relationship.  Let’s take a look at how these elements play out in the workplace in order to establish, maintain, and even restore trust:

B – Boundaries

I have already written about the importance of establishing clear roles and responsibilities at work to ensure workplace function and productivity, but that is just the tip of the boundaries iceberg.  On a more fundamental level, workplaces thrive when people communicate with each other with respect, clear intention, and appropriateness.  That means boundaries are set, understood and respected.  This is a key element to effective communication in the workplace; where boundaries are ill defined or ignored, trust breaks down and conflicts take hold.

R – Reliability

Reliability in the workplace means doing what you say, when you say it, and doing this consistently.  Coming through and being true to your word again and again is the only way to establish reliability.  Without this, there can be no trust that anything will actually get done.  Another sometimes overlooked way to establish reliability is to be careful not to over-promise and under-deliver; be clear about your capabilities, availability and limitations so you can always do what you said you were going to do.  And remember, actions speak louder than words in establishing workplace reliability: always produce what you have promised.

A – Accountability

Establishing accountability in the workplace means creating an environment where employees who make a mistake can take responsibility for it, apologize and then make amends to try and set things right.  For management employees, this is an excellent opportunity to demonstrate leadership and cultivate a culture of trust.  And there is no better way to foster innovation and creativity – necessary elements for successful workplaces - than by creating an environment where everyone can take chances, explore new ways of achieving goals, and learn from mistakes in order to improve functionality.  Unfortunately, the opposite is true; where there is no accountability, there is no trust, and no freedom to try new things or grow.  Lack of accountability leads to stagnation, and leaves a workplace open for conflict when no one wants to accept responsibility for things gone wrong.

These three elements begin to show how multifaceted trust in the workplace really is, and provide many points of access to begin to understand where trust may have broken down and how to repair that.  Join me again next week to finish exploring Dr. Brown’s philosophy of BRAVING connection to strengthen trust in the workplace.