Trust is complex and is central to many issues facing employers today. Problems like civility, engagement, and retention all have root ties to trust. With so much disruption in our workplaces, how do we make repairs when that trust has been broken? Is a repair the right approach in the workplace or is it better to ignore it and move on from petty violations?
HRs have the ability to speak to these topics like no other role in the company. On a webinar the other day, multiple HR managers agreed that metrics, like employee engagement, are the responsibility of their managers and that HR has little influence on these and similar metrics. But what if HR could provide the tools for leadership to be successful on people issues like trust? Many HRs are stepping into the interim CHRO role to advise leadership on topics like these.
“A culture of trust needs to be set at the top, and the HR department has a key role to play in advising senior leadership to help establish the right tone for the organization, says Paul Eccher, president and chief executive officer of the Vaya Group, a talent management consultancy based in Warrenville, Ill.” SHRM
HRs have more tools at their disposal than they think to influence stakeholders on principles of trust, empathy, and respectful communication. Offering awareness around interpersonal skills can help support leadership in navigating polarizing and uncivil landscapes. Through awareness of how subtle negative behavior erodes trust, HR can help leaders understand their impact on critical people metrics like retention and employee engagement.
The National Library of Medicine conducted a study on how workplace incivility affects employee performance, with a focus on trust in supervisors. The results affirmed that incivility is harmful to the performance of employees, and that trust in manager helps employees to perform better. The trust in the supervisor significantly mediates the incivility–performance relationship.
A full 86% of workers believe that much of the incivility seen today is caused by the behaviors exhibited by U.S. leaders, and 78% attribute it to the language that leaders use.” SHRM Current Events Pulse survey of 1,080 U.S. workers, Aug. 23-25.
When your leaders have strong interpersonal skills, engagement and overall satisfaction are increased for your employees. But because of the complexity of trust, repairing violations is no easy feat. Trust shows up for us in different ways, like the trust we have for ourselves or the employee. The workplace has the ability to stress test those areas of trust.
Trust became a central issue in 2020 during the pandemic, as millions of workers were suddenly working from home, forcing employers to confront their trust issues. Eccher of the Vaya Group says, “Organizations also need to help employees trust themselves… Before the pandemic, employees who worked remotely often were those with stellar track records who had gained the trust of managers… Today, younger workers and those without previous remote-work experience may have “no confidence they can work effectively from home, while managers may not “truly trust themselves to lead a remote workforce.”
Why Focus on Trust?
Jen Fisher, U.S. chief well-being officer for the consultancy Deloitte, says, “Trust is the foundation of every relationship in our life.” Once trust exists, other areas of improvement will naturally resolve in the workplace. Metrics like retention, employee engagement, and performance are all affected when trust is in a healthy state.
However, trust violations in the workplace can be subtle, and managers can easily be unaware of the behaviors that result in violations. An example of a trust violation is having a negative interaction with a manager that went unrepaired. These smaller violations add up quickly depending on the volume. By the time you realize employee engagement is an issue in your organization, the trust could have already been eroded over some time.
What Makes Up the Components of Why We Trust Someone?
Dissecting the components of trust can help us understand why trust is effective in some cases and fails in others. Organizational psychologist Ruchi Sinha, lays out what she sees as the pillars of trust based on her research on the Likeability and Competence Dilemma.
The Three Elements of Trust
- Competency – What promises you make and keep
- Benevolence – Whether the other person listens, anticipates, and genuinely cares for your side
- Integrity – Honesty, transparency, trust, and fairness are all on the table
Our intentions are a big factor in communicating our level of trustworthiness to one another. With benevolence and integrity, these are authentic traits that must come from a place of genuine care.
Communication is the Starting Point
Trust is defined by good behavior over time or showing consistent, reliable behavior over a period of time. The starting point is communication.
Trust in organizational leadership saw a significant decline during the pandemic and began recovering in 2023, but presently, only 23% of U.S. employees strongly believe in their organization’s leadership.
Trusted leaders establish trust by communicating the map of ‘where have we been’ and ‘where are we going’. They articulate the roadmap and what it will take to get there. This establishes confidence in the leader and protects team members from inconsistency and unreliability.
Leaders can explore using vision maps to convey their plans to the team. It helps not only leaders to gain a clear vision but also provides them a tool to communicate confidence in their role as a leader. Gallup says, “when leaders communicate clearly, lead and support change, and inspire confidence in the future, 95% of employees say they fully trust their leaders.”
Trust is a choice we make.
When we have different expectations of a situation, that’s when trust erodes. When we communicate, acknowledge, and clarify, we step back into an optimal environment to build back trust. But when it comes to rebuilding, it’s a choice both sides have to make.
As a Restorative Justice Facilitator, I watched countless cases struggle with trust. It was the number one obstacle when coming up with a list of ways the harms could be repaired between the offender and victim. We can do things to repair the harm like cleaning up the graffiti that was sprayed or financially paying back money that was stolen, but trust and credibility are built over time.
We can learn some lessons about trust from the restorative justice process. It requires voluntary participation from each party, and it is required that the offender take accountability. The first step is the most difficult: the courage to come back into relationship and acknowledge that a violation occurred. It would appear we were acknowledging our weakness as a leader, but in fact, by admitting to our imperfections, we are more likely to be seen as trustworthy.
How to Determine Your Approach
In its 2016 global CEO survey, PwC reported that 55% of CEOs think that a lack of trust is a threat to their organization’s growth. However, most have done little to increase trust, mainly because they aren’t sure where to start.
It’s helpful to start with analyzing the severity of the violation to inform your approach. The repair might depend on how long the employee has been working with the company and how many violations they have had so far, for example. Existing relationships have an easier time building back trust.
Questions to consider when planning your approach:
- Do you have an existing relationship?
- How long has it been since the violation occurred?
- Has there been any attempt at repair?
What to Do When There is a Trust Violation
In the workplace, violations may not be apparent to your leadership, so it’s important to give them the tools to understand what behaviors are most commonly resulting in a violation. For example, employees watch for signs their manager is taking credibility for their work, or that they can’t be relied on to jump in the trenches when the team is in the weeds. These little digs erode trust.
This Ted Talk talks about various forms of repair. The first interview in this episode on parenting gives us an example of how parents can make a repair with their children. Clinical psychologist, Becky Kennedy, says take the first step by acknowledging the violation to validate the child’s experience.
Organizational psychologist Ruchi Sinha says this step is the most difficult because many leaders wonder that if they admit to the violation, then do they become liable? Sinha says studies show after there was a trust violation, the perception of not acknowledging it resulted in another trust violation.
Here’s an example of an acknowledgement she gives in her interview with Harvard Business Review (HBR), “The Essentials: Building and Repairing Trust”:
“I want to admit that deadlines were missed, promises were made, not to place blame. We all went through the plans and the complexity of the project was dynamic.”
Can you think of a time when you haven’t acknowledged a violation? What happened to the relationship?Sinha says there is always time to address the elephant in the room. After the acknowledgement, it’s then important to explain, not justify.
Explaining means stating the contributing facts, while justifying means defending why those things happened that resulted in the offending incident. Justifying means there is a reason it happened and you’re not at fault, which would sidestep accountability. Taking accountability is the most important factor in rebuilding trust.
To avoid the trap of drowning from shame in the liability, when we admit failure, it’s helpful to share what the plan is moving forward, explaining what could have caused it, and what set of improvements need to be made.
It’s also helpful to convey that you care about the needs of the other party. When we convey we care for and understand the needs of the other person, it’s another uptick towards building up or building back trust on Sinah’s level of benevolence.
When violations are not repaired or acknowledged, it causes a dishonest environment and a psychologically unsafe environment. Most of the time, it seems employees are more comfortable ignoring a violation and moving on. The less confrontation in the workplace, the better, right? But when relationships are not inherently healthy in the workplace, the work suffers.
Three common stages
1. Acknowledge: Communicate the acknowledgement
2. Act: Lay out the repair or a plan for a repair
3. Plan: Set future goals and keep consistent with your promises. Reliable action builds credibility over time.
Recognition of the violation has to be communicated clearly. It’s then important to address how things will change or how the harm will be repaired, and commit and follow through with consistent action to build back credibility.
How to Build and Maintain Trust Remotely
A relationship that is not in-person builds consistency and reliability in subtle ways. Are you accessible, present, and paying attention? Do you respond to emails, follow up to offer support, or track important milestones? When your leaders show signs of being absent, they are subtly diluting trust with your employees.
Sometimes violations go unnoticed or are made to seem not a big deal, causing resentment to build up for your employees. Little steps add up to erode trust. What I have mentioned are lower violations that can be repaired fairly easily, or can be more easily ignored, unless the volume increases.
HBR recommends communicating with as much transparency as you can share with the employee, saying, “I know I have delivered mixed messages, broken trust in the past, and am working on building that trust in the future.”
When is a Good Time to Make a Repair?
HBR says, the more spontaneous and quick the repair, the more authentic and sincere. Sometimes the problem is complex, and you don’t want to step into the process until you’ve taken the time to understand it. In these cases, when you go to make the repair, acknowledge why the time has passed. If you don’t have the plan for the repair, make it as specific of a promise as possible to come back with a plan.
As long as you communicate why you waited to make the repair, it is never too late. Humor can even help to state the obvious: “I can’t believe this is three years late.” People will look at the way you say it as signs of your competency and transparency.
What Happens When You Can’t Share All the Details?
There are moments when you can’t be forthcoming with all the details when making the repair and explanation. In these incidents, be upfront about your motives and intentions when you can’t be about information. Convey your sincerity around avoiding deception. You can tell the truth that is useful, Sinah says. That’s not lying but is instead sharing the information needed for the situation at hand.
Top Tips for Repairing Trust in the Workplace
- Keep it light and positive
- Stick to the facts and impact, not interpretation
- Have courage. Get support
- Trust is restored when good communication outweigh negative experiences
- Explain don’t justify
- Explain if time has passed on unresolved issues or concerns
- Allow trust to return
Just remember, trust = good behavior/time.
Election season is a chaotic time for leaders and collectively our stress levels have been rising since the pandemic. With the level of conflict in our workplaces, the tools to repair trust are critical for your leadership and is a perfect opportunity for HR to influence company wide issues through interpersonal relationship skill building.
Understanding the components of trust and factors can help you determine the approach to repair. Like applying Sinah’s competency, benevolent, and integrity model that analyzes the components to trust and how to keep your intentions in check, coupled with HBR advice on when and how to make the repair effective, depending on your approach.
HR is in a unique position to advise on interpersonal skills, like trust. Engagement, retention, and productivity of your workforce depend on your leader’s success. By providing them with the tools to make repairs in the workplace, you can help them rebuild trust now and in the future. The more you continue to offer influential materials and resources that help your leaders succeed, the easier your role will become.
