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The recession has seriously impacted morale, as well as the bottom line of many organizations
One-third of American workers say that they plan to look for a new job when the economy improves. Of those, 48 percent cite a lack of trust in their employer as the reason, according to the 2010 Ethics & Workplace Survey conducted by Deloitte LLP.
“Trust isn’t a word that business leaders talk about very often,” said Hilary Potts, president and CEO of CLG Inc., a global behaviorally based management consulting firm. “They’ll say that the company isn’t performing up to par, or a team isn’t clicking. Rarely do they say that it’s about trust, yet trust is often the missing element that is keeping them from moving forward.”
With her company going through significant transition, Potts read about 15 business books in January 2010. “I had a handful of books about trust, but the one by Dennis and Michelle Reina really resonated with me,” said Potts. She took notes and gave “Rebuilding Trust in the Workplace: Seven Steps to Renew Confidence, Commitment and Energy” (Berrett-Koehler, 2010) to colleagues.
“Other books made you feel good when you read them, but you’d finish and say ‘So now what?’” she said. “These authors said it was OK to acknowledge that not all of your business relationships were fully trusting and to realize that building trust is never a ‘once and done’ thing. It’s a process. This book gives organizations a way to talk about trust issues without it being uncomfortable and real concrete steps they can take to effect results.”
Although she’d never called an author before, Potts called the Reinas and enlisted their help in coaching her and her firm’s senior leaders.
“We’re a 17-year-old company that is asking ‘How do we maintain our culture, grow and add new people, while working within a dynamic, shifting business environment?’ It’s a challenge,” said Potts, but she knows they are on the right path. “It’s a leader’s constant job to create an environment where people are heard, share, keep agreements and honor each other's talents and gifts. We’ve found the Reinas' principles extremely useful.”
Dennis and Michelle Reina explored the concept of trust for their doctoral theses originally. They began consulting and speaking and co-founded the Reina Trust Building Institute in Stowe, Vt. They have been helping corporate clients measure, develop and restore workplace trust for two decades.
“Trust speaks to our core human need for connection. In all relationships, trust will be built and it will be broken, because we’re all human. So it is essential to learn how to rebuild it,” said Michelle Reina.
The workplace is full of unintentional betrayals that are the consequence of careless actions, and the intentional betrayals of actions taken deliberately to hurt others.
There are minor betrayals like gossiping, blaming, hiding mistakes, withholding information and taking credit for someone’s work, and the major betrayals that are commonly associated with the mismanagement of organizational changes and result in layoffs, mergers and acquisitions.
These betrayals can cause loss of confidence, worker engagement, productivity and profits. While trust issues are nothing new to the workplace, the recession has brought many more of them to the surface, the Reinas said.
“Many of our clients come to us because the change processes they have implemented aren’t delivering the results they want,” said Dennis Reina. “We help them see that the presence or absence of trust is the key to the success or failure of any change initiative. It’s not necessarily what a company is going through that creates the problems, but how it is being implemented and how people are being treated through it.”
“You can make tough decisions and have people’s trust deepen,” added Michelle Reina. The couple showed one multimillion-dollar company that couldn’t afford to meet payroll for two months ways to engage their employees and strengthen relationships.
“The leaders were honest with their workers, empathized, but asked them to commit to going after this one piece of business together, believing it would change their future,” she said. “The people put in long hours, not only for their delayed paychecks, but to put the company on a sound financial footing, and they got the business.”
A seven-step process for leaders
Trust is easy to break and hard to repair. Yet, as a leader, in the absence of trust, your vision and objectives are virtually irrelevant.
The good news is that there is a proven seven-step process, drawn from two decades of research, for taking concrete, constructive, and compassionate action.
By practicing these seven steps, you can muster courage, mend broken trust, and move forward with a more engaged and energized workforce.
1. Observe and acknowledge what 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. Be sure to interact face-to-face, plus use tangible tools such as organizational surveys and special instruments that measure trust.
2. 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 creating safe, ongoing forums and ensuring that employees’ emotions don’t go underground.
3. 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 involved and “in the know.” And seek support for yourself, too, perhaps through fellow leaders, a mentor, or an executive coach.
4. 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 potential benefits.
5. 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 take responsibility and hold themselves accountable, too.
6. 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 and do better going forward. Ask people, “What needs to happen for forgiveness to take place?” Additionally, ask yourself the same question if you need to forgive yourself.
7. 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. Help people in letting go and moving on with a sense of shared responsibility.
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