Full Colour Friday: Practical guide to rebuilding trust

When trust has been broken within an organisation leaders often mistakenly think people can be taken from distrust to trust in one jump. However, there are several stages to rebuilding trust and the actions you need to take depend on where you are on this journey.

The factors that lead to a loss of trust are often complex, multi-layered, a mix of tangible and intangible, and most difficult of all, passed down from existing to new employees, even if the thing that led to a loss of trust has passed or been resolved.

Indicators that trust is an issue in your organisation

People often wear a mask when engaging with leaders, regardless of how open those leaders are, which makes it hard to unpick what’s really going on with trust.

There several clues which can help you uncover whether you have an issue with trust in your organisation.

Tensions between members of your senior leadership team (these will inevitably play out at other levels of the organisation too)
Silo working
Certain professional groupings having more sway than others on areas outside of their expertise, e.g. fundraisers influencing service design
Low levels of self-reporting of diversity characteristics
Differential scores between staff who have minoritized characteristics and others in your organisation
Cliques
Higher than sector average sickness and absence
Low levels of challenge in team discussions
Struggles to innovate or implement new ideas/ways of working
Quiet people who rarely speak in meetings
Culture of gossip

These are just some examples, and I’m sure you can think of others.

The Full Colour© model of trust

The following are stages an organisation will go through in rebuilding trust. It is important to plan a clear journey from one stage to the next in sequence. It may feel like this will take ages, but ultimately working through this step by step will save you time. Skipping stages will either result in failure, or worse, deepening distrust.

Full Colour Trust Model©

Questions to help determine where you are in the trust journey

The specific questions you ask will depend on the reasons why trust has been damaged. The suggestions below are prompts to help you define the questions that will unlock understanding in your particular circumstances.

What factors have led to a breakdown of trust?
Are those factors still there? If not, what has changed? To what degree do people recognise that change?
Is there a uniform view on levels of trust in your organisation or are there differences in different parts of the organisation?
What data do you have on trust? This could be formal data like evidence from employee engagement surveys, informal evidence like “water cooler” conversations or external data, such as reviews on Glass Door
How can you get an accurate picture of trust? Do vocal people in your organisation represent a common view? How can you find out? How can you hear from the quiet voices?
What stories do people regularly tell about what it is like to work at your organisation? What past events or experiences are regularly brought up or informally passed on to new colleagues?
What actions have you taken to rebuild trust? What impact have these actions had? How do you know?

Why attempts to rebuild trust can fail

Reactive or “one and done” actions

If trust has been broken you need a planned journey to bring your organisation back from this. This takes consistent effort and actions over a sustained period of time, well after the things that led to distrust in the first place have gone or been reduced.

Lack of congruity between actions to rebuild trust and habitual leadership behaviours

If trust has been broken, leaders will be under even more scrutiny from employees than normal. It is critical that leaders align their formal and informal behaviours with that which is needed to rebuild trust. Most leaders will believe they are doing this, but there are varying degrees of self-awareness amongst leaders, so it is important to get feedback on whether how you are behaving is coming across in ways you intend.

Lack of consideration of emotion

The emotions associated with a loss of trust can last long after the situations that caused it have been resolved. It is not enough to take actions that people understand at the level of the mind. Planning for and addressing emotions is as critical as remedying the incidents or behaviour that damaged trust.

Time lags

Leaders sometimes expect that rebuilding trust is like operating a machine: you put actions into one end and trust comes out of the other. The reality is that there is a time lag between actions being taken and trust being rebuilt. You won’t see results at first, but you need to keep taking the actions, even when this feels thankless.

When trust has been broken it is absolutely possible to rebuild it, it just takes a little thought and consistent actions and behaviours.

Can we help?

Want help with any aspect of your EDI journey? Reach out and to set up an informal, no obligation chat. Contact [email protected]