Monday's Opening Thought: October 18, 2021

This week’s opening thought: I feel like it’s time to circle back around to the concept of trust. We went there a little last week but we’ve still got much to discuss. I’ve heard the word trust a lot lately in organizations that I work for and with, and I think it’s time for a refresher course on how the concept of trust works in the workplace.

Companies often ask me to help them in their quest to get their employees to trust them after years, sometimes decades, of constantly dismantling trust and faith in them and the organization’s decisions that they co-sign either with zeal or inaction. Leaders, supervisors, managers, and department heads – they all want me to conjure up the “right” mix of checklists and one-off trainings to make those who work under them trust them again. Of course, the mental and emotional labor and difficult conversations that come with rebuilding trust and holding themselves accountable for eroding trust ain’t on the table. People like me are supposed to be the vessel to push employees into finding the company and its leaders trustworthy again. And this is supposed to be done without those with power, positionality, and white privilege participating in the reconciliation and accountability process.

Y’all are a case study in why it takes a lifetime to shift organizational culture. Y’all are also a case study of how patriarchal white supremacy works. What does that case study prove?

That too many people, especially white people, believe that there is power in trust but not in the accountability and humanity that fosters, builds, and rebuilds trust once it’s been broken.

You don’t get to have people trust you without earning trust and making sure your words and actions engender a consistent belief that you are trustworthy. And if you stumble and fracture that trust? Then you have to be willing to atone for your missteps and get back on the horse to prove once again that you are trustworthy. But y’all don’t want that kind of responsibility. Y’all want a 60-minute palatable-to-people-of-pallor non-mandatory training paired with a marginalized person you’ve hired to advocate for you and sell folx on a narrative around why you should be trusted. And even if you constantly do and say things to said person to solidify that they won’t trust you either, you expect them to give it their all to make others trust you. What does that do? Well, you force your new “diversity hire” to decide to either maintain their integrity and face being fired or pushed out or throw their credibility in the nearest garbage can and cape for you.

Does that sound like a relationship built on trust to you?

Do you want people’s trust? Earn it. Be human. Own your responsibility in fracturing and eroding trust. But quit trying to find a middle person to do it for you.

There ain’t no such thing as trust by proxy.