Break the Ice: How Difficult Conversations Build Trust At Work

Do you feel disconnected from the people you work with?

You’re not alone. Nearly 70% of workers surveyed by Front Page in 2020 said that they felt disconnected from their teammates, a problem made worse by more and more companies going remote. When employees feel alone or disconnected, they’re more likely to jump ship and find a more welcoming environment. This was true even before the pandemic.

So how can a fragmented team bridge this gap and build meaningful connections? The answer can be found in the story below about a woman who opened up about the emotional turmoil she was going through. She wasn’t alone, it turned out, and the conversations that resulted helped bring the team closer together through a shared sense of trust.

As the following story shows, you can open up a much-needed conversation with just a simple email that will strengthen the human bonds with your team and make your workplace an overall healthier place to spend your days. By building trust, everyone feels comfortable being honest about the things that matter. In turn, feedback becomes more open and honest, improving the work (and the workers) as a result.

For One Team, A Single Email Changed Everything

Three days after the devastating murder of George Floyd, moment in history that reverberated indelibly around the world, Porsha Grant sent an email to a newsroom distribution list at the Philadelphia TV station where she worked at the time. As a Black woman and a manager, Porsha felt someone needed to address the oversized elephant in the room. The subject line: “Racial Trauma.” In it, she wrote:

“I’m just going to say it. I’m tired. If your social media feeds look like mine, you’ll see that a lot of Black people are feeling this way. There’s always an undercurrent of these feelings, I think. But between the Central Park incident and George Floyd…mix in a little COVID-19 and the disparities it has shone a light on…and…yeah, people are tired. Angry, and tired.”

Her email went on to ask, “How about finding a mental health expert to address this?” Before HR or company leaders could respond to the situation, Porsha found herself filling that need.

“I guess it took somebody to break the ice,” Porsha told me.

Once the ice had been broken, a conversation emerged, first by email, then in person. While it took a little prodding, once the conversations started happening—and happening within earshot of other people—people who had been hesitant to speak up were more comfortable in having those conversations, Porsha recalls.

The topic of “how has racism impacted you” created an outpouring of openness and emotion. The catharsis felt immensely powerful, even over a video call. The openness, honesty, and candor people showed up with can be traced back to the email Porsha sent in May.

It was a difficult conversation to start, but difficult conversations build trust. Trust makes difficult conversations easier. Each event increases the positive effect of the next—another example of how a good idea can ripple throughout a team or organization.

More Trust Leads to Better Feedback

Why is feedback so hard? Because we are all self-conscious creatures who constantly worry what others are thinking about us.

Plus, we naturally turn defensive the moment we sense negative feedback, like a boxer cornered in the ring. Studies show that people unconsciously drift away from co-workers who are known to offer criticism or negative feedback. We find our way to those people who build us up, are “safe” and friendly.

Feedback, of course, is how we get better. Yet feedback conversations on work performance have always been difficult. Since feedback is a process to foster improvement, how will you ever get better, if you never actually hear the feedback?

One way that many people have experienced feedback and criticism is the “feedback sandwich,” that classic feedback delivery system in which you start with some small praise, follow it with criticism, and top it off with more praise. The idea is that people will be more open to the criticism if you lead with something positive.

It’s such a well-known method that Meg Peters, who has spent more than seven years working at Facebook, says there’s a joke among her friends about having a “straight deli meat kind of day.” This happens when it feels like all the feedback is criticism and none of it is praise. All meat and no bread.

She started her career as a newspaper reporter and quickly grew accustomed to feedback early on: an editor would mark up each of her news articles and suggest areas for improvement, making it a constant part of the culture. It’s similar at Facebook, she says. And trust is a key part of the process.

“It’s not what you say, but how you say it” is the advice Dave Smith offered me when I started my consulting career at SmithGeiger in 2017. The substance of the feedback, input, or advice is one part of the equation. But the manner in which it’s delivered is even more important. That’s how trust is built. Or destroyed.

Why Trust is Essential for a Successful Team

Trust is the cornerstone of a healthy (and happy) work life. Trust allows you to expose assumptions, have difficult conversations, challenge one another, and offer and receive better feedback. Trust replaces stress and anxiety; rather than worrying what your boss is thinking or why she made this decision, you trust her to have the organization’s best interests in mind. If needed, you can ask direct questions and know that she will understand that you also have the organization’s best interests in mind.

While 2020 brought many challenges, one silver lining is a collective reckoning that we needed to get better at having conversations on race and diversity as well as mental and emotional health. Those are really difficult conversations. As I watched courageous people open up in front of their colleagues that year, I couldn’t help but think how much easier it could be to talk about work stuff in the future.

When you trust someone, you can say hard things. And ask tough questions. You can also offer direct and constructive feedback on performance, ideas, and other work-related issues. Better and more honest feedback has a ripple effect through both internal communications and how you deal with your customers and business partners.

Encourage Honest Conversations About Tough Topics

Honesty, whether about your emotional state in a volatile year or how a colleague performed on a recent assignment, is a core component of building trust within your team. When your team has a solid foundation of trust, the workplace is healthier and the work is better.

You may be wondering: how can I build trust among my team members? One simple way is to ask someone for “advice” instead of “feedback.” This encourages more of an open-ended dialogue, and the personal nature of offering one’s own advice can lead to a deeper conversation. It also helps to remember that it’s not always what you say, but how you say it. Poor feedback delivery can make people feel stupid and belittled to the point where they no longer want to contribute. Be direct, encouraging, and respectful.

When difficult but honest and emotional conversations arise between coworkers, they allow everyone to grow and bond over a shared sense of trust. The team feels more cohesive, and everyone grows as a result.

The following is adapted from The Butterfly Impact by Mark Briggs. For more advice on connecting with your colleagues, you can find The Butterfly Impact on Amazon.