Workshop: Become a Trust Builder

Would it surprise you to learn that recent studies suggest that employees trust in senior management, direct supervisors, and co-workers is dwindling across all industries?

According to a new Maritz® Poll conducted by Maritz Research:

• 11% of employees strongly agree their managers show consistency between their words and actions
• 7% of employees strongly agree they trust senior leaders to look out for their best interest
• 7% strongly agree they can trust their co-workers to do so
• Approximately 1/5 of respondents disagree that their company’s leader is completely honest and ethical
• 1/4 of respondents disagree that they trust management to make the right decisions in times of uncertainty

While workplace trust has been dwindling since the Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco scandals of the earlier part of the decade, threats of layoffs, COVID 19, political challenges, unemployment, and downsizing have only exacerbated the problem.

Leaders must be intentional to create a culture of trust and transparency. Trust forms a foundation for building relationships, collaboration, feedback, and growth. A sense of safety and a comfort level with interpersonal interactions pervade a workplace that has developed trust. In this workshop, we will study three components that must be understood and addressed to build and lead in a culture of trust. Leaders will be challenged to look at their personal capacity and perception of trust and the potential impact of that on the organization and those that they lead. We will then address those discoveries with the goal of becoming a role-model of a trust builder.

The Trust Builder session is a highly interactive and engaging session on how to grow and cultivate more trust into the culture. In this session we will discuss:

• The foundation of all relationships
• How to deepen relationships
• Giving people the benefit of the doubt
• Asking questions for clarification
• Assuming best intent
• Four steps for growing trust within a virtual team

Please come prepared to interact, share your thoughts, ideas, and experiences. You will have two videos to watch and a blog to read. We will discuss these in breakout groups so be sure to have read and watched them before we begin.