Management Zone

Rebuilding of Trust

Peter de Jager

My recent Municipal World column on trust, and a recent webinar on the same topic, generated some interesting email exchanges. The most common follow-up question was, “How does one rebuild trust, once it’s been lost?”

It’s a good question. Knowing the answer would be useful to managers, organizations in general, and government at all levels. (Not to mention teenagers, wayward spouses, and those who run Ponzi schemes.)

But, it’s a good question because there are no good answers. There is no guaranteed way – and there’s certainly no quick way – to re-establish trust once it’s been betrayed. Change might indeed be a “constant,” but “distrust” is almost eternal. There’s a good reason we have the adage, “Once bitten, twice shy.”

When we “trust” someone, or something, we’re assuming a risk in the belief that nothing bad will happen to us as a result. When it does, why should we “trust” again? We now have hard proof that we were unwise to trust in the first place!

Take the simplest of examples. You enter a meeting room and mindlessly sit in a chair, trusting it will support your weight, and one of the legs buckles – spilling you onto the floor. Next week, you enter the same meeting room, and that chair is the only one available. You’ll do your best to test it somehow before gingerly lowering yourself onto the seat – hands clutching the table and legs positioned to support your weight – prepared to prevent another fall.

There are clues here to how we regain trust. Before we “trust” the chair again, we do two things. First we perform some sort of test. Secondly, we prepare a contingency plan … just in case. We’ll continue to do these things until we’ve determined for ourselves that the chair is once again, trustworthy.

Things get a tad more complicated when we’re dealing with something other than inanimate objects.

John tells us that he will make sure that “X” happens at such and such a time. We take him at his word. “X” doesn’t happen as promised. Now what? (Note that John could be our manager, spouse, elected official, teenage son, or local service provider.)

Whether or not we’ve lost trust in John depends on whether or not we accept his reason for non-delivery. If it was beyond his control, then our trust in him might not even be dented. On the other hand, if it’s obvious that John was 100 percent responsible for the failure, despite his assurance that he would deliver, our relationship with John changes drastically.

The question before us is: How does John regain our trust? The difficulty of solving John’s self-inflicted problem depends entirely on how much pain his non-delivery caused us. If he missed a luncheon appointment it’s not that big a problem. If he lost our life’s savings … then his problem is, shall we say, a tad larger?

If John wants to regain our trust (if he doesn’t, then we’d be much safer if we took that as a strong hint that he isn’t worthy of our trust, now or any time in the future), then here are five possible steps.

1. Ask for forgiveness – This speaks to his intent. If we believe that he’s truly sorry that he let us down, then we’re more likely to trust him again – cautiously. The question always arises, is he sorry he let you down, or sorry that he got caught?
2. Do penance – Talk is cheap. It’s one thing to say “sorry” – it’s another thing entirely to act in a way that attempts to make up for the transgression. Consider “penance” as going the extra mile to demonstrate the apology is real and sincere.
3. Volunteer to engage and assume all the risk – Trust is about assuming risk. If John demonstrates his willingness to assume all risk, or at least most of it, then he makes it easier for us to trust him, because he’s significantly reducing how much risk we have to assume in the process. In a business arrangement, John can accomplish this with a non-performance penalty written into the contract. His failure to deliver a second time would hurt him far more than us.
4. Accept that all of the responsibility for rebuilding trust rests with the one who broke it – This is part and parcel of #1. By assuming all responsibility, he’s demonstrating that he was the one accountable for the betrayal.
5. Patience – This takes time. If the transgression is huge, it’ll take forever. How long would Bernie Madoff, Grand Master of the modern Ponzie scheme, have to make amends before you trusted him to manage your retirement fund?

As I noted at the outset, there’s no good answer to the question, “How do I get someone to trust me, after I’ve already betrayed that trust?” The best answer is, don’t betray trust in the first place.

During a traditional Jewish wedding there’s a ancient ritual that speaks to this issue. The breaking of a crystal glass. One interpretation (there are others) is that the glass represents the relationship/trust between the married couple that once the glass/relationship/trust is shattered/broken, it’s impossible to put the pieces back together again. The lesson is simple enough: don’t break the glass. Don’t betray the trust; don’t become untrustworthy. MW

From the January 2010 issue of Municipal World

Check out Peter’s bio on the Municipal World website.