CHAPTER NINE

How Trust Is Transformed:
Transformative Trust

How do you create an abundance of trust in your life? How do you help your team and your organization take trust to the next level, even during periods of change when there are more questions than answers, when there are disappointments and uncertainty?

Faced with a strategic business decision handed down from corporate headquarters, one division of a Fortune 100 company had to lay off 100 people from its 420-person operation in a one-company rural town. The layoffs meant the most significant changes in the ten-year history of the division. Everyone in the community would feel the impact.

Although the local managers were not involved in the initial decision to reduce the division’s workforce, they were fully responsible for implementing the change. They were committed to doing so in a way that honored their people, their contributions to the company, and the relationships they had developed with one another.

The local managers carefully orchestrated each phase of the downsizing process.

These leaders were sensitive to their employees’ needs and acknowledged the impact of this change on both those who were leaving and those who would remain. “We know this is affecting your lives dramatically,” the division manager said, holding back tears, but allowing himself to express his emotions. To ensure people remained fully informed, management opened lines of communication and held special meetings and forums every step of the way to make sure everyone heard the same message at the same time in person. They made sure that everyone had a safe place to talk about each piece of news after they received it.

Managers worked diligently to assist employees throughout the process, whether they were directly or indirectly affected. They set up career counseling and outplacement centers, visited with management in other organizations to explore job opportunities for those who were leaving, and invited companies into the plant to meet with job candidates. Venues were established to support those who weren’t leaving the company. Skilled facilitators helped address transitional needs and set up closure meetings for employees to say good-bye to those who were leaving.

Within five months, management made sure that all the displaced employees who wanted to continue to work were placed in new jobs, inside or outside the corporation. They held open discussions with those remaining on how the layoffs affected them, their working relationships, and their performance. They clarified new sets of expectations and boundaries. Working with the employees, management formed agreements regarding new processes and relationships, established channels of communication and information sharing, and provided training to teach new skills.

Throughout this traumatic time in this company’s history, the behaviors of the local managers cultivated Transformative Trust. Their conviction to honor their roles as leaders, their courage to tell the “hard” truth at all times, their compassion in remaining sensitive to the impact of the change on people’s lives, and their awareness of the organizational community made a difference. People were able to cultivate trust even within an adverse situation because they demonstrated awareness of and caring about how others were affected by the experience.

Creating Transformative Trust

You’ve learned that trust begins with you: you have to give it to get it. When you consciously and consistently practice the behaviors of The Three Cs to lay a foundation of trust—and work through the Seven Steps for Healing to restore trust when it’s been broken—you contribute to a workplace that cultivates Transformative Trust. You trust others more. They trust you more. You trust yourself more. This elevated level of trust energizes relationships and allows teams and organizations to function at their highest levels.

Transformative Trust is created when the level of trust among co-workers reaches a tipping point and begins to increase exponentially. At this moment, trust becomes self-generating and synergistic, and it takes on a dynamic force of its own. It becomes integrated into the way people interact and do business every day. When the level of trust reaches this critical threshold, it transforms the ways by which you and your teammates work together and expands what you’re able to accomplish. Transformative Trust changes you, your life, and the lives of others in your organization.

 

Transformative Trust energizes relationships and
expands what you are able to accomplish.

 

Transformative Trust is a game changer. Trustworthiness becomes an asset that takes your relationships to the next level. You feel good about yourself, your relationships, and your shared work. You feel inspired about others’ belief in you and what you’re accomplishing. You feel acknowledged and respected, and you strive to ensure others feel acknowledged and respected. You are guided by intentions to be in the highest, best service to one another. As a result, you and those you work with show up for work alert, excited, and full of energy, knowing that what you do makes a positive difference.

Victor, a technician, knew his news wouldn’t make Pam happy, but he also knew he had to share it with her directly. She had already emphasized she needed the lab report by this afternoon. The problem? Equipment failure (again). Victor knew it was going to take many hours before he could complete the required tests.

Pam listened as Victor outlined the issues and waited until he finished before she spoke. “Victor, thanks for alerting me to this issue. Let’s focus on what can be done to get this work completed on time. Did you know that the biochemistry department at another hospital in our area health service region just purchased a new machine? Let’s call them to see whether they can help out.”

Victor felt affirmed in his decision to discuss the delay with Pam before the deadline arrived. Pam smiled. She’d noticed that Victor had certainly started to practice the behaviors promoted at the last team meeting, namely to remember to “renegotiate directly with the requestor” when one cannot honor a commitment.

In work environments where Transformative Trust unfolds, you and your co-workers learn to communicate openly and honestly with one another, even if you need to share bad news. You give one another the benefit of the doubt, take responsibility to keep your agreements, and renegotiate if you need more time or help. You learn to manage your fears, test your assumptions, avoid prejudgment, and resist getting defensive. You redirect tendencies to judge and criticize your co-workers into a desire to understand their experiences and needs. You become more willing to trust in your relationships within your team and across the organization.

It’s important to remember the presence of Transformative Trust does not mean breaches of trust don’t occur. There will always be disappointments, letdowns, and occasions of broken trust. These hurts simply come with the territory of relationships. The presence of this form of trust does mean that you and the people you work with are committed to minimizing the common breaches of trust and practicing the Seven Steps when betrayals happen. You make conscious choices to treat betrayals as opportunities to strengthen interpersonal relationships, team and organizational effectiveness, and overall efficiency.

 

Transformative Trust doesn’t mean betrayals
don’t happen. It means you and others are willing
to work together to overcome them.

 

An organization rich in Transformative Trust is the antithesis of one mired in the impacts of betrayal. Betrayal and distrust come from a place of deprivation and scarcity, whereas Transformative Trust comes from a place of abundance. When you and those you work with honor, respect, nurture, and trust one another, your Capacity for Trust flourishes and you unhook the bounds on what you’re able to accomplish together through fruitful collaboration, innovation, and problem solving.

The Four Catalysts for Building Transformative Trust

Although the development of Transformative Trust is simple to discuss, you have to dig deep to create it. Consistently practicing the behaviors of the Three Dimensions of Trust—The Three Cs of Trust—and working through the Seven Steps for Healing requires conscious effort. To help you get farther faster in your journey to build Transformative Trust, we’ve identified four catalysts that amplify your trust building efforts: Conviction, Courage, Compassion, and Community. We call these catalysts The Four Cs.

Conviction helps you practice the behaviors that build Trust of Character, Trust of Communication, and Trust of Capability day in and day out. Courage allows you to honor yourself and your relationships when the going gets tough. Compassion enables you to forgive yourself and others for letdowns, mistakes, and transgressions. And a sense of Community encourages you to reframe painful situations, take responsibility for your behaviors, and look at the bigger picture to see your contribution to others. The Four Cs help you move yourself, your colleagues, and your organization beyond betrayal toward an enduring culture of Transformative Trust. Trust begins with you.

We use the word expansion to visualize the interplay of The Three Cs of Trust, the Seven Steps for Healing, and the catalysts that create Transformative Trust. (Please refer to the Seven Steps for Healing figure in Chapter 8.) Consciously practicing the behaviors of The Three Cs of Trust and the Seven Steps for Healing expands your own and your colleagues’ capacities to trust in yourself and in your relationships, team, organization, and surrounding stakeholders. Taking the next step and tapping the catalysts of Transformative Trust—The Four Cs—amplifies your collective trust building behaviors within the Three Dimensions of Trust and the healing steps. This amplification creates momentum in the outward expansion of trust in your organization, giving rise to a multiplier effect that eventually leads trust to increase exponentially and synergistically.

When you and your colleagues fail to practice trust building behaviors, work through breached trust, and develop your relationships using The Four Cs of Transformative Trust, this expansion of trust reverses. Your collective Capacity for Trust depletes, relationships de-energize, confidence dwindles, and commitment wanes. Bottom-line results reflect this contraction. Conversely, when there is a conscious practice of trust building behaviors, the steps to rebuild trust are honored, and The Four Cs are integrated into how you and your co-workers relate to one another, your Capacity for Trust expands. Relationships are energized, confidence surges, and commitment skyrockets. Bottom-line results become a source of organizational pride.

Building Transformative Trust is everyone’s responsibility, but it begins with you. It begins with your positive intention and personal commitment to be aware of yourself and your colleagues and to integrate trust building strategies into how you show up every day. This work requires discipline. The catalysts we explore will help you stay on track when you’re challenged, confused, or simply depleted from your efforts. Digging deep to tap into your inner conviction, courage, compassion, and sense of community will unlock profound sources of energy and enable you to approach your workplace relationships with renewed vigor. Trust is generated within you and your relationships with others. Trust begins with you.

Conviction

Your convictions stem from your awareness of your higher purpose—your grasp of what is most meaningful to you and your desire to make a contribution to others. You live by your convictions when you’re authentic in your words and actions, have passion for what you do, and maintain confidence in what you believe. This alignment between intention and action strengthens your ability to trust yourself in challenging situations. Moreover, it encourages others to trust that you’re committed to making your convictions a reality.

 

Your convictions stem from your awareness of your higher purpose.

 

Unfortunately, in some work environments, authenticity is punished. In such a workplace, it may be tempting to bow to pressure and “go underground” with your inner truth. When you don’t listen to your own voice, trust your instincts, and hold firm to what you know is right, however, you betray yourself and invite distrust from others. You run the risk of being seen as inauthentic or self-serving, as just going through the motions, or even as taking advantage of others by taking more than you give. When others see you through this lens of distrust, they’re primed to feel that you’ve let them down.

Living by your convictions every day takes discipline, focus, and effort. It can be difficult to be consistent in your behavior and maintain harmony between your personal values and those of the organization. It’s not easy to speak up and confront behavior that you know undermines trust in your relationships. It can be gut wrenching to step up and say “I’m sorry” when you’ve hurt someone. Yet, by staying true to yourself and holding tight to your convictions, you achieve confidence and competence—and expand your personal Capacity for Trust and ability to contribute to Transformative Trust in your organization.

Your life is affected by how you live your convictions, as are the lives of others. When you’re clear about your principles, you’re able to draw upon them to give new relationships a chance, to give freely to others, and to keep your agreements—or renegotiate when you honestly can’t meet them. Clarity of—and steadfastness to—your convictions puts you in a position to help others arrive at the same level of clarity within themselves. You create the change you want to see in your organization through modeling it first yourself. Trust begins with you.

Courage

Courage comes from the French word coeur, which means “heart.” It takes courage to trust your heart and do what you know is right in the face of adversity. Yet, you need this strength to admit when you’ve betrayed others or they’ve betrayed you. You need courage to step into the healing process, take responsibility for your own shortcomings, and work through your pain toward more trustworthy relationships. You need courage to create Transformative Trust.

Being courageous allows you contribute more fully to your workplace and the people in it. You let go of the need to control and begin to delegate. You help others learn and grow and inspire them to develop their own inner strength and confidence. You take responsibility for your own mistakes, take the lead in correcting them, and encourage others to confront their own fears of failure. You begin to understand that true bravery doesn’t lie in fleeting bravado but in substantive action.

 

It takes courage to trust your heart and do what
you know is right in the face of adversity.

 

It can be scary to admit you don’t know what will happen in the future or to speak up and point out a betrayal resulting from an individual’s lapse in integrity or your organization’s failure to practice its values. The courage to honor your convictions serves as your guidepost in these tough situations. When you turn away from fear and doubt and toward your inner resilience, you’re empowered to tell the truth, honor your intentions, and stick to your values. You have the energy and mental toughness to deliver bad news without spinning it, confront challenges with a spirit of adventure rather than trepidation, and open yourself up to how deeply you care about the opinions of others. Courage breeds trust—both in yourself and in your relationships. Courage breeds Transformative Trust in your organization.

Compassion

Do your co-workers know you care about them? As you attempt to navigate changes in your organization, do you have compassion for those facing uncertainty, confusion, and vulnerability? Are you sensitive to the effects of your words and actions on people who may not be equipped to handle them?

At the transformative level, compassion provides you with an awareness and understanding of others and their struggles. You remember it’s not always easy to be human. You consider that at any moment in time, your colleagues are probably doing the absolute best they can do—even if you feel you could have done the job better. You pause and reflect that others often find themselves up against the same walls you’ve been up against, and they, too, might have produced better work under different circumstances. Compassion encourages you to recognize that, given the opportunity, people want to contribute and make a difference.

 

Compassion provides you with an awareness and
understanding of others and their struggles.

 

When compassion runs high, your relationships are strengthened, your awareness is enhanced, and your personal Capacity for Trust expands and contributes to the trustworthiness of the entire organization. You recognize and respond to the needs of those who trust you and encourage them to feel safe to talk openly and honestly, to tell the truth, to keep an open heart.

A compassionate approach to your relationships allows you to better appreciate others’ intentions, to listen actively, and to be gentle enough with yourself that you put your defenses aside in an effort to take in—and understand—what is being offered. A freer exchange of feedback develops in organizations rich in Transformative Trust as you and others share insights with the higher purposes of growth and learning. As you stretch to become a better version of yourself, you’re more able to say “thank you” for these insights—and mean it.

When compassion pervades an organization, you and others understand that although any particular situation, structure, or job description may be temporary, your relationships are constant. You behave accordingly, taking extra steps to avoid breakdowns in trust and immediately working with others toward healing when they occur. This sense of urgency in repairing damaged relationships throws open the door to forgiveness.

The act of forgiveness is an act of creation. You create opportunities to build a more trusting workplace when you and your colleagues release one another from the burdens of blame, guilt, and distrust. You’re encouraged to look beyond your pain and no longer hold one another hostage over past betrayals. Your collective energy is freed up for more productive connections, and, although you remember the lessons you learned from letdowns, you don’t let them define your current interactions with one another. Forgiveness energizes trust across the organization.

Transformative Trust is fueled by a climate of compassion that allows people to transcend the traditional ways of conducting business. People honor their colleagues’ humanity over short-term goals and may even leave formal contracts at the door in favor of more personal understandings. “We’ve realized that operating strictly by the contract impedes performance,” the division manager noted. “We trust one another enough to not rely on them.”

Community

When Transformative Trust is present, you understand your individual effort is part of a larger whole or community. You see the underlying meaning and value in what you do, and you take pride in your contribution to the collective effort. You understand that your colleagues are more than people to help you get work done; they’re valuable citizens of your workplace community.

At the transformative level, this sense of community promotes openness and honesty in your professional relationships. You feel connected with others through a foundation of trust, and you look forward to cooperating with them. You take responsibility and honor your agreements in the spirit of the relationship, and you feel secure counting on others to get the job done. Through your connection with one another, you shift your focus of operation from I to we. You believe in yourself and you believe in others. Trust grows; relationships are energized.

 

Your sense of community shifts your focus from I to we.

 

When relationships are taken to the transformative level, you and your co-workers talk to one another. You feel safe discussing deeper issues of interest and matters of importance to you. You and others willingly admit mistakes and mention errors to one another because you know that not doing so would be a betrayal of your community—as well as a lost opportunity for learning and advancement. You feel free to ask for help without fear of looking incompetent or “less than” in the eyes of others. In your connection to your workplace community, you recognize and act on opportunities to give and take, learn and teach, help and be helped.

At the transformative level of trust, you invest in and you create community. You know the best way to achieve individual, team, and organizational objectives is through the collective knowledge, skills, talents, and experiences of your community—people working together in relationship.

Renewal of Trust

Workplace conditions rich in Transformative Trust where you can thrive begin with you. You want to create a work environment where you can use your skills and abilities and tap into your heart and soul fulfilling your potential while also pursuing the organization’s business objectives. You create this environment through practicing The Three Cs of trust building behaviors, honoring the Seven Steps for Healing, and leveraging the four catalysts of Transformative Trust. Taken in concert, these actions create an environment in which trust becomes a renewable resource—readily available and continuously replenished.

 

In organizations with Transformative Trust, trust becomes a
renewable resource—readily available and continuously replenished.

 

You experience this renewal of trust as empowerment to unleash your vast creative and productive energies for the greater good of the organization. You’re inspired to bounce back from betrayals, own that you are not a victim, and choose healing over hurt. Together with your colleagues, you find yourself more readily dealing with constant change and challenging situations. The foundation of trust becomes your constant, and you are energized by its presence.

People Want Trust in Their Relationships

You don’t know what the future holds for your team or your organization. At best, you can only anticipate the challenges and do your best to prepare for them. You do know, however, that regardless of what the future holds, it will take people to address and overcome those challenges. And people, regardless of where they work or what they do, want very much the same thing: to be trusted and to be able to trust in return.

 

No matter where they work or what they do, people want the
same thing: to be trusted and to be able to trust in return.

 

Are you willing to be a catalyst for transforming the quality of relationships in your organization—and in your life? Are you willing to establish a work environment where everyone is excited about what they do and the people with whom they work? Are you willing to create organizational community where people have an opportunity to express who they are and to be fully present at work? Are you up for the opportunity to take trust to the transformative level?

The raised awareness, language, and understanding you have gained through the Reina Trust & Betrayal Model serves as a framework with which to begin. By trusting in yourself, and choosing to trust in others, you embrace the journey. Trust begins with you.

Trust Building in Action

Reflecting on Your Experience

Think about the four core catalysts of Transformative Trust and the people with whom you work. How would embracing those catalysts transform your relationships, your team, and your organization?

1. What is your conviction to building trusting relationships?

2. How do you exemplify courage?

3. How do you and your co-workers extend compassion to one another on the job?

4. How do you contribute to a sense of community being embodied in your workplace?

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Trust Tip Trust is built through practicing the behaviors of The Three Cs and working through the Seven Steps for Healing. Trust can be amplified and expanded to Transformative Trust by leveraging its four catalysts: conviction, courage, compassion, and community.

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