Why Being Trustworthy Isn't Entirely Our Decision To Make

We all like to think of ourselves as honest and trustworthy, but is that how others see us? There may be small, seemingly insignificant behaviours, words or actions that are undermining the trust others place in us.

Trust is easy to break and difficult to rebuild. Many of us think it takes a major action or event for that break to happen. In reality, it may be the small but consistently repeated actions or behaviours that quietly erode the trust people place in us until, eventually, it disappears.

When small behaviours become a pattern

Consider this situation. Your manager is warm and friendly and tells you they have an open-door policy. Yet whenever you pop your head around the door, they are busy or, if they invite you to sit down, you find their attention is constantly being drawn back to whatever is happening on their laptop.

You leave feeling frustrated and believing that you haven't really been heard.

How many times do you think this needs to happen before you decide not to bother asking for their time any more?

Now think about some of the things you may have done. Have you ever promised someone that you would “get back to them” on a query or concern, only for time pressures or a difficult issue arising elsewhere to push it from your mind? Perhaps you fail to follow up at all, or you look into the matter but forget to go back to that person with what you found.

How do you think they might feel?

It is tempting to think that these things are small or insignificant, but when actions and behaviours are repeated, they form a pattern, and that pattern is picked up by those around us.

If we don't recognise and correct those behaviours, one day we can look up and realise that we have somehow fallen out of the communication loop. People no longer come to us. They seek support or information elsewhere, and we gradually lose contact with our team and their direction of travel.

We're left looking for a major cause of this breakdown and often cannot find one.

What are other people's behaviours telling you?

So, how do we actually go about recognising when our actions are undermining people's trust in us?

I believe the answer lies in developing our awareness of what other people's actions and behaviours are telling us.

Is someone no longer appearing at your door or asking you to help resolve a query? Are you somehow receiving information after an issue has passed, rather than being on top of it? Are meetings no longer free-flowing discussions, but ones where everyone listens to what you say and nods their head in agreement, only for you to discover later that there were ideas, suggestions or concerns that should have been brought to your attention during the meeting?

But don't stop there. Once you have identified these patterns, examine your own reactions. Are you quick to make excuses or defend your decisions? Do you write off other people's reactions or behaviours and form negative perceptions of them because you are unwilling or unable to question whether there might be validity in what they are saying or doing?

So, once you've recognised these patterns and consciously removed any filters through which you might be viewing them, what comes next?

When intention and impact don't match

Having the courage to examine your own behaviours and how they might have contributed to, or caused, the patterns you are now seeing is the first step. This is where you need to be brutally honest with yourself.

Ask yourself this: you know what you intended to say or how you intended to behave, but was that how others experienced it?

Don't be tempted to make excuses. This is where clarity is your best friend. Only when you see yourself and your behaviours clearly can you start to correct them.

Rebuilding trust happens on someone else's timetable

Once you have that clarity, that's when the real work begins, and there is no guarantee that there will be an easy fix. So, how do we go about repairing that trust?

As previously mentioned, trust is easy to break and very difficult to repair. Rebuilding it takes consistent behaviour over time. This is where actions speak louder than words. What we say matters, but it is our subsequent behaviour that demonstrates whether anything has really changed. You will need to show, consistently, that you are making a conscious effort to change and to earn back their trust. It cannot be achieved with a pretty speech or a single promise that things will be better.

People are not machines where errors can be corrected by replacing information or rewriting code. Once a person's trust has been broken, rebuilding it means demonstrating through our actions that we have understood where we went wrong and are making genuine efforts to change.

And throughout that process, you need to remain vigilant in examining whether your intentions match the impact they are having on others.

Likewise, we cannot dictate how long it takes for someone to regain their trust in us. That is something only they have control over, and some people will take longer than others. That doesn't make them difficult or awkward. We need the awareness and patience to keep demonstrating that we have changed without expecting the other person to trust us according to our timetable.

Of course, sometimes trust may never be fully rebuilt, and we need to own the fact that the impact of our behaviours may have been too significant for that person to feel comfortable placing their full trust in us again.

Have you ever had a friend or family member who you forgave time after time until, eventually, you decided that the best thing for you was to go no-contact?

Sometimes a person can be so deeply affected by what has happened that they will never return to the place they were before.

We can choose to change and to behave in ways worthy of trust. We cannot choose when or whether someone else will trust us.