159
Chapter 17
Unpacking Baggage
and Restoring Trust
Eliza watched as her sales and customer service groups
evolved quickly into a close, well-functioning team. She
delighted in observing employees clarifying their condi-
tions of satisfaction, presenting their concerns in order to
avoid fake consensus, and holding each other account-
able. The team was working well. But Eliza also knew
that holding onto these new tools would still be difcult
once a little time passed and the stress of the busy season
kicked in. She waited to see how things would evolve in
that pressure cooker. She didn’t have to wait long.
About three weeks after the workshop on trust and
collaboration, Dave was in Eliza’s ofce, angry and
frustrated.
“I just came from Kirby’s ofce and discovered that
the new order for Tech Tron was never submitted by
160 ◾ Transforming Teams
Claire or her team. I thought that thing had been submit-
ted weeks ago. So now we’re behind schedule, just as
production schedules are tight, and I have to go back to
the client to tell them we dropped the ball! I won’t tell
them Claire dropped the ball,” said Dave, responding to
the look of protest on Eliza’s face, “but I’ll have to tell
them HDS Tech did . . . that I did. I just don’t know why
she didn’t either put it forward or come to me. All of this
work and we’re right back where we started.”
“Before we jump to conclusions, what does Claire
have to say?” asked Eliza.
“She’s taking her time lling it out. Slow and steady
loses the race, Eliza! She needs a higher sense of energy!
I can’t take it,” shouted Dave. “I’m working really hard at
this, Eliza, really I am. But I don’t sense that Claire has
changed at all. I’m just completely frustrated.”
Eliza called Claire and asked her to come into her
ofce. When she arrived, she seemed equally exasper-
ated with Dave. When asked what happened with the
order, she volunteered, “I’ll tell you what happened.
The spec sheet was a mess. There’s no way we could
have built the module to Dave’s specications. He was
missing an entire section about user requirements,
existing software, and interface needs. My team has
been working for three weeks just to get the data that
he didn’t put in. Nothing would make me happier than
to get this off our desk, but I can’t do that until I have
all of the pieces answered,” Claire said.
“Claire, we went over the spec sheet,” Dave shot
back. “All that you needed was right there. Why do you
have to second-guess me and check and recheck all of
Unpacking Baggage and Restoring Trust ◾ 161
my work all the time? Why can’t you just trust me? I’m
telling you, if something goes wrong, I’ll take responsi-
bility for it. I’d rather have that happen than not deliver
on the promise I made to the client, which, in this
case, was to have the product in his hand by the 23rd
of the month.”
Claire just sat back and shook her head.
“What, Claire?” asked Eliza. “Why are you shaking
your head?”
“Because, the honest truth is that I don’t trust him.
I’m sorry. I want to, but I don’t. Eliza, I’m just not sure
he has the competence to assess the technical needs of
the client. I’m sorry. I know we’re trying hard to work
together, but I’m just not comfortable with this,” said
Claire, reluctantly. “I can’t maintain the fake consensus—
I’ve been thinking about this ever since the work we did
with Karen. I can pinpoint it perfectly to my concern
about his competence. Yes, we’ve had issues with reli-
ability, but my big issue is with his competence.”
“Well, let me ask you this, are you willing to work to
restore that trust?” asked Eliza.
“Yes, I am. Honestly I am. But I don’t know how to
do that,” said Claire.
“How about you, Dave? Are you willing to work on
this?” asked Eliza.
“Absolutely. I think we have to. Yes, I’m in for what-
ever it takes.”
“Okay, then. Both of you settle down and leave the
rest to me.”
* * *
162 ◾ Transforming Teams
Eliza spent a considerable amount of time over the
next day or so doing her research. She called her busi-
ness coach colleagues. She called Charles Henry and
Karen. She read through her copy of The Speed of Trust
by Stephen Covey and her dog-eared copy of The Thin
Book of Trust by Charles Feltman. Then she got to work
on a plan to resolve this issue.
She wasn’t at all condent that things between Claire
and Dave could ever be truly xed. That was really up
to them at this point. But she felt comfortable with the
road map she had set out for them. She was nervous,
and yet excited. She set up a meeting for them and was
waiting for them in the third-oor conference room,
a warm space with beautiful light, big windows, and
comfortable chairs. She had the following things written
on the whiteboard at the head of the table:
Steps to Restoring Trust:
Choose to trust
Vulnerability
Unpack the baggage
Actions vs. intentions
Question your interpretation
New requests, offers, and promises
Claire and Dave each read the whiteboard upon
entering the room and then took seats across from
each other, with Eliza at the head of the table. The rst
thing Eliza did was trade seats with Dave. She did not
want them sitting in a way that could be interpreted as
adversarial.
Unpacking Baggage and Restoring Trust ◾ 163
Dave and Claire seemed impressed and slightly
amused by the amount of effort and consideration Eliza
was putting into this discussion. It clearly mattered a
great deal to her. She was working hard to be the hon-
est broker that so many of her sources told her was
necessary to address a serious breakdown in trust.
“Let me start by saying that I have no say or author-
ity in this discussion. My only intention is to give you
the best tools and language I know of to help you
restore your relationship and move forward.
“The rst thing I want to say, and this I strongly
believe, is that distrusting each other is a conscious
and intentional choice. Trusting someone is as within
reach as choosing to distrust someone. And in order to
choose to trust someone, you have to, by denition, be
willing to be vulnerable to that person.
“It’s like that exercise when you close your eyes,
hold out your arms, and fall backward into your part-
ner’s arms. You’re deciding to be vulnerable to your
partner. What’s really hard is to be willing to close your
eyes and op back into a partner’s arms when that per-
son has dropped you a few times in the past. You may
be totally justied in your distrust if you’ve landed on
the oor in the past. But even then, you can make the
choice to stand up and try it again.
“So here’s my rst question: are you willing to make
yourself vulnerable to each other and try, one more
time, to trust each other?”
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