Don't Blame the Recession
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What a great headline, sure to attract readership: "Rebuilding the trust the recession killed." Wow. That reminds me of a Monty Python sketch, "Dead Bishop on the Landing." In that sketch, the judgment is that "society is at fault" and the "church police" (you really have to see it) troop off to arrest society.
Here's a news bulletin. The recession didn't kill trust. If trust was killed it was people that did it, most likely the people in charge.
And if trust was killed at your place, it won't spring back to life with the snap of a finger or even an off-site trust-rebuilding workshop. Trust is like trees. It grows, you don't build it, and it grows slowly.
All it takes is an idiot with a chainsaw to cut down a tree that's been growing for decades. Then you have to start all over. It's the same for trust. There's no magic tree-glue or trust-glue to make things all right again before supper.
Boss's Bottom Line
If you want trust to grow in your team, don't put your faith in magic formulas. Trust grows when you keep your promises and care for your people and show that every day with lots of small actions.
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For me, this comes back to guarding your personal integrity and reputation.
A Corporation also has an integrity and reputation. Corporate leaders not only ruin their personal integrity and reputation but that of the Corporation. If they think through the impact on the Corporate integrity and reputation, they are defending themselves and the Company.
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Thanks, Kirk. You're right about thinking through the integrity issue before you act. I'm often fascinated that people who relish their own power so often offer the excuse that they "had no choice" when they make decisions that do harm to others.
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There's always a choice.
Often, additional work will find a better, non-harmful solution. Too often, we avoid an inconvenient option by choosing the harmful choice.
9 of 10 times, there's profit margins involved when the harmful choice is made....
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I think you're right, Kirk, and I also think that it often takes work and transparency to find a better solution.
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Very good reminder of redirecting responsibility back to the source and invalidating the redirection blame game. In fact from my experience as a counselor and my experience as a supervisor and leader, I would take it even a step further. Growing trust is a process, but regrowing trust is not the same as growing it from scratch -- there is a scar there and it can become irritated at any time when you are trying to regrow trust. If a marriage fails because of a violation of trust (e.g. infidelity), the failure rate of healing from that is fairly low. In any relationship, best to effectively grow and maintain, then chance having to heal something that may not be healed. I heard one supervisor rationalize to me he had to do something even though he knew trust in him could be damaged. My response to him was the same I give everyone, "Be warned, there is no given that trust can be healed."
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Very well said, Dale, and spot on. Once you have a breach of trust, there's no guarantee that it can heal completely.
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