The mistrust epidemic: why we don't trust anyone at work

In this article:

• The creeping crisis of mistrust
• How to spot a trust deficit
• What happens when we don’t have trust at work
• How and why things got so bad
• How and why things aren’t all bad
• How trust works
• How to rebuild trust in your workplace

A creeping crisis

I’m fortunate to work with some incredible companies and people – ambitious, passionate leaders who are dedicated to their jobs and work their butts off to get things done. When they call me, it’s usually because something isn’t working quite right. They’re finding it hard to agree on their next steps, or they’ve noticed a gap in their capability.

For years, this has usually meant I’ve had a lot of variety in my work: teaching policy advisors how to build more influence, working with executive teams to get strategic clarity, designing programmes to accelerate organisational change, or training eager consultants to facilitate better meetings.

But over the last six months… that’s started to shift. While the reasons for calling might still differ, there’s been a consistent underlying issue common to almost everyone I speak to: a lack of trust.

How to spot a trust deficit

A trust deficit shows up in many ways, depending on your organisation or team size. For some, meetings might take longer, and people aren’t sharing or speaking up. In other workplaces, it might be that staff seem to be checking in more and are less confident making judgement calls in case they get it wrong. Oftentimes, it’s slow or one-sided decisions – lots of relitigating, not much action. People say things in the room, but they don’t take action back at their desks.

Sometimes, it’s super sneaky. I see things like: people only reporting good news to their boss because they’re afraid to show the truth. Or even trickier: nodding-head syndrome—a lack of conflict or disagreement at the surface, masking secretive politics and maneuvering behind the scenes.

All of these situations have a lack of overall safety in common. People don’t trust themselves, each other, or their leaders, and when that reaches a tipping point, the backslide happens quickly.

You can tell when you’re in an environment like this, even if you can’t name it. People are unreliable, and they don’t talk to each other. The vibe changes all the time, and it’s stressful. People don’t own their mistakes; they don’t help each other out. After a while, work feels like a guessing game.

Diagnose your trust level

1. Are job expectations clear? Do people understand exactly what they need to do?
2. Are meetings enjoyable and productive - or slow and energy-sapping?
3. Is there an us/them mentality with the leadership team? Does it feel like leaders play favourites?
4. How much gossip is there? Is promotion and progress more about ‘who you know’ than following the rules?
5. Are people trusted to take on new responsibilities? How often do you need to check in with your boss?

The impact of mistrust

Trust ultimately drives performance. Left untreated, mistrust spreads like a disease, infiltrating our choices and conversations and making it impossible to do great work—or feel good about it.

When we don’t nab a deficit in time, the cracks in our foundation start to show up everywhere. We see:

• Even our most dedicated performers' loss of spark and joy sends engagement downward. Over half of employees say trust impacts their mental health, career choices, and sense of belonging.

• Information withholding, as people cling to what gives them power and stop sharing openly with others

• Trouble collaborating on joint projects, slowing progress and making innovation impossible

• Exhaustion and overwhelm, caused by bottlenecks that could be solved by delegation… if only people felt safe handing things over

• Productivity drops off as decisions are re-hashed or not made at all

• Climbing absenteeism leads to an eventual spike in turnover as people plot their exit from an environment they don’t enjoy anymore. Over a quarter of employees have left a job because they didn’t feel trusted.

When did things get so bad?

Struggles with trust-building are nothing new. In Five Dysfunctions of a Team, published in 2002 (the brilliant model that Meetings that Matter is closely tied to), Patrick Lencioni points to trust as the foundation for building a powerful team. 

As Lencioni describes, the lack of trust is a fear of vulnerability, which stops us from developing as a team, engaging in productive conflict, and delivering useful outcomes. 

Lencioni discusses what happens when people hold back from asking for help, giving advice, or sharing their learning. As people become increasingly uncomfortable working together, achieving a common goal becomes further out of reach as we respond poorly to problems and stop supporting each other.

Ultimately, mistrust kills an organisation from the inside out – and we’ve known this for a while. In its 2016 global CEO survey, PwC reported that 55% of CEOs think a lack of trust threatens their organisation’s growth. It’s nothing new.

 But things are getting worse – and not just at work. This is a bigger issue, spreading across communities. Working off my hunch, I started digging for information – and it’s not pretty. The 2021 Edelman Trust Barometer has revealed “an epidemic of misinformation and widespread mistrust of social institutions and leaders across the world.” They identify a “failing trust ecosystem unable to confront the rampant infodemic, leaving the four institutions – business, government, NGOs and media – in an environment of information bankruptcy and a mandate to rebuild trust and chart a new path forward.” 

According to the latest report, the pandemic has accelerated an erosion of trust at all levels worldwide, most evident in—unsurprisingly—the US and China.

Why, though?

A bit is going on out there. Six of the most significant factors underpinning our current mistrust epidemic include:

• Covid economics
• Job uncertainty
• Pandemic fatigue and chronic stress
• Remote working
• Media mistrust
• New workplace expectations

Covid economics

The pandemic has had a huge economic toll; even in countries like New Zealand and Australia, who’ve escaped the worst. In Australia, GDP per capita took a massive hit – peaking with a 7% quarterly loss in June 2020, with unemployment reaching 7.5%. In New Zealand, it took longer, but we officially entered a recession in September 2020, with GDP contracting by a massive 12.2% in the June quarter. In the US and Europe, the toll has been far worse.

Job uncertainty

Our sense of workplace safety has been shaken by heavy travel restrictions, closed workplaces, rapid restructures, and job losses. The impact on trust – and performance – makes perfect sense. When people feel insecure about the safety of their jobs, they’re less engaged because their energy is focused elsewhere. According to Gallup research, employees harbouring fear about the stability of their work are 37% less engaged than their safer counterparts. Given less than a third of employees are truly engaged in their job as it is, according to the same research, that’s a worry. 

While things are now looking up for our economies, our jobs may not be safer. In the latest Mercer report, 71% of Australian HR leaders expect COVID-19 to impact their business negatively, with restructuring or workforce changes the top priority for investment in 2021. 66% of Australian organisations surveyed are planning a restructure – compared to just 45% globally. This has trickled down to employees, with a December 2020 Hays report indicating that 74% of employees plan to look for a new job in 2021.

Pandemic fatigue and chronic stress

We’re super stressed. When the pandemic hit, and we needed to mobilise quickly, most of us did. We worked harder than ever to rapidly shift – moving services online and staff into remote environments – and for many people, the dial got stuck in hero mode 

Hero mode is amazing and can be an exceptional productivity boost—but it’s not sustainable. The lag effect of powering up and powering through is hitting home, with people feeling exhausted and overloaded. 

In many workplaces, people expect to be constantly at their best, eroding trust between leaders and staff. Burnout is increasing globally, and we’re no safer on this side of the world. Research from AUT suggests that 11% of New Zealand workers face burnout thanks to stress and overwork.

It’s a dangerous place to be. According to research by Accenture, burned-out employees are 63% more likely to take sick days and are 2.5x more likely to leave their jobs. Mental health issues are on the rise, with more employees accessing EAP programmes as pandemic fatigue hits. People have been expending huge amounts of extra energy dealing with the struggles and changes of a new lifestyle, and it’s exhausting - which lowers our resilience and boosts negative feelings. We’re more on edge, we’re more anxious, and if we’re not careful, this puts us in a negative self-perpetuating cycle of chronic unhappiness.  

Remote working

People who started new jobs during lockdown often speak of the difficulties of adjusting to a work environment and getting to know their colleagues online—and this is not limited to new hires. Zoom might be great for juggling family responsibilities and reducing the pressure to wear work outfits, but it comes at a cost. 

Virtual meetings can be challenging environments, especially when we use them over a long period of time—and the impact on our working relationships is starting to show. Without the intermittent personal interaction of a physical office environment, we can find it harder to build relationships and connect with people personally. We miss body language and facial cues and miss the face-to-face advantages of eye contact and small talk. Over time, these lost connection opportunities can worsen an existing culture of mistrust or make it impossible to build relationships.

Media mistrust

Media thrives on fear. It’s how journalists meet click targets and provoke hateful conversations in their comment threads, boosting visibility and attracting advertisers. We see it in our entertainment, as true crime podcasts continue to be all the rage, and people seek solace in the complexity of others’ lives to escape their own. This has long been a trend in a resource-constrained, fast-news media environment – but things are worsening.

The click-fodder provided by COVID has sparked a sharp increase in anxiety-inducing media—and politics! This might be great for news budgets, but it has a long-term impact on how we feel about the world. As we operate in a context of mistrust, external forces start to affect how we judge situations, people, and challenges in our lives, making it harder for us to assume positive intent.

In Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know, Malcolm Gladwell examines the harm and tragedy we face when people fail to understand each other or see others’ points of view. Targeted marketing and algorithms drive these divisions deeper, serving us content that aligns with our existing viewpoints and creating bubbles of mistrust between key groups in society. It might be easy journalism… but it’s ruining us.

New workplace expectations

As we continue to bring important social and equity issues to light in our communities and at work, the pressure is on employers to show how they’re tackling diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Recent movements, like Black Lives Matter and fair pay initiatives, cast the spotlight on how we make decisions – and not everyone is coming up well. While undeniably for good, these forces can sow seeds of doubt regarding how we’re treated at work.

A recent Workforce Institute study, which surveyed almost 4,000 leaders and employees globally, has surfaced some of these tensions, showing that we’re not convinced our employers are on our side. For example, 38% of employees don’t trust their organisation to put employee interests ahead of profits. 32% don’t trust equal standards for pay and promotions, and 29% don’t trust their employer to create a diverse and inclusive workplace.

Beyond diversity, our mistrust extends to logistics and administration, too. 27% of people do not trust that they will be scheduled fairly, 25% do not trust that their employer will create a safe workplace, and 24% do not even trust that they’ll be paid accurately each pay period.

The lag effect of the pandemic and the ongoing ripples of change, confusion, and uncertainty are hitting us hard. In organisations that aren’t actively responding, we may very well be about to reach a tipping point in mental health, performance, and engagement.

It's not all bad!

We’re wobbly, but the game isn’t lost yet. Some workplaces are experiencing higher trust levels than ever. In many workplaces, the shifts caused by the pandemic have positively affected trust, and the rise in flexible working has unleashed new levels of freedom and permission that would have been unheard of a few decades ago. 

Bright spots include:

• Flexible working

• Business reputation

• Trusting + thriving

Flexible working

The same Workforce Institute Survey unveiled the above curly statistics and found that flexible working trust levels are positive. A quarter of employees globally say they’re now trusted to swap shifts without manager approval, and a third can select their own time off.

The positive flow-on of having autonomy in scheduling our lives and work is huge and provides real hope for managing mistrust in the future. We’ve seen a greater focus on employee health and well-being than ever before, as people have been forced to bring more of their lives given their work.

School closures and lockdowns supported a transition toward a more flexible approach to managing work and children, and many of us have more flexibility than ever in how we do our work.

Business reputation

Interestingly, with trust in social institutions at an all-time low, business has become the most trusted institution globally (across business, NGOs, government, and the media). Recent data suggests that many consumers and employees expect businesses to step in when social trust is shaken. While this puts added pressure on businesses, socially conscious or not, it also allows employers to build new pathways and relationships with their teams.

Trusting = thriving

People who work in high-trust environments thrive. In a 2017 US study, neuroscientist Paul Zak discovered a physical link between trust and performance, thanks to the power of oxytocin. He found that employees in a high-trust environment experience…

• 74% less stress

• 50% higher productivity

• 106% more energy at work

• 13% fewer sick days

• 76% more engagement

• 29% more satisfaction in their lives, and

• 40% less burnout.

Beyond the personal, trust helps businesses thrive financially, increasing speed and lowering costs. It’s a shortcut to getting things done more quickly.

When people trust a business to deliver, marketing and sales are easier. Scanning is twice as fast when airport security trusts people to be more compliant. When people trust each other to deliver, meetings are quicker. When opinions feel safe to share, problems are solved faster. Everything is simpler and easier when we don’t have to build in extra layers of bureaucracy and accountability.

How trust works

Trust involves different directions, dimensions and dynamics.

Directions of trust

Trust moves in at least three different directions – inwardly, horizontally, and vertically.

Inward trust

To trust others, we need to trust ourselves. When we have a negative self-perception about our reliability, competence, or worthiness, we tend to project that to others. In The Speed of Trust, Stephen M. R. Covey identifies the key areas we must focus on —our intent, integrity, capabilities, and results. When we believe in our own credibility, we can extend that compassion and faith to others. 

Vertical trust

Leaders need to trust their people, and people need to trust their leaders. Vertical trust looks at both directions: Do people feel safe and supported? Do leaders feel confident in the capability and integrity of their teams? 

Horizontal trust

People need to trust their peers to uphold their commitments, deliver on their promises and be reliable, positive sources of support and collaboration. Trust between teams enables us to make decisions and get things done together. Without horizontal trust, progress slows to a standstill.

Dimensions of trust

Stephen M. R. Covey: “We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behaviour” – The Speed of Trust.

Trust at work isn’t just about our performance – it’s about our personality, too. Gardner identifies two key, mutually reinforcing dimensions of trust – competence trust (professional ability) and interpersonal trust (personal connection.)

Trying to have competence and trust without interpersonal connection is challenging because we need a connection to humanise people and reduce attribution error—where we judge ourselves by our intent but others by their behaviour. 

Jack Zenger, author of Speed: How Leaders Accelerate Successful Execution, calls these three elements of trust relationships, judgement, and consistency. In his research, he found that relationships matter the most—so even if we mess up or are occasionally unreliable, our relationships will save us.

Dynamics of trust

While trust might initially be an inward job, it isn’t built alone—you can’t just “become more trusting” (…I’ve tried). But it does require things to work on all levels.

Each actor in a trusted ecosystem must be committed to the same behaviours and attributes. When people embrace vulnerability, choose to forgive and assume positive intent of their peers, we create a virtuous cycle of trust that feeds on its own outcomes. 

As Glaser outlines in Conversational Intelligence, trust is a team sport. It requires small deposits of proof and positive interaction, which means we need to make space for that to happen and build it in a managed and incremental way.

The ties of trust are built through:

• Transparency of communication – “Tell me how things are, honestly.”

• Perception of fairness – “Treat me equally.”

• Role clarity – “Be clear about what you need from me.”

• Reliability – “Do what you say you will.”

• Safe conflict – “Disagree with me respectfully, without attacking me personally.”

• Accountability – “Have proportionate consequences when I don’t hold up my end of the bargain.”

• Forgiveness – “Make it safe for me to try things and fail.”

How to build trust at work

I’m not an expert here, and I have plenty of trust issues. A lack of trust is my most challenging barrier to being an effective leader.

In many ways, I’m the worst person to give trust advice, as it doesn’t come naturally to me… but I suspect that might be why I can help.

To support my own journey toward being both trusting and trustworthy, I’ve taken the nerd approach and done the research.

Then, I’ve applied this thinking in my own life and to the coaching work I do in supporting others to build powerful teams and to lead successful conversations with Meetings that Matter.

Both evidence and anecdote support some powerful interventions that can turn mistrust around. None of them are particularly challenging—they just require intention in how we show up and spend time together.

Nine things you can do to build trust at work

1. Give more praise. Being recognised for our efforts triggers a flood of oxytocin, the feel-good chemical in our brain, which boosts how people feel at work. According to neuroscientist Paul Zak, recognition works best when it’s “tangible, unexpected, personal and public.” It works best when it happens as quickly as possible once the goal has been met and when it comes from peers.

2. Set achievable goals. When we can’t realistically achieve the workload set, we quickly lose trust and happiness. With attainable challenges that have a clear endpoint, we feel good. Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile found that 76% of people report their best days when they progress toward their goals.

3. Chat more openly. Uncertainty about what’s going on increases chronic stress reduces teamwork and drives down engagement. It sets off the rumour mill and makes it hard for people to concentrate or feel good about each other or their work. In 2015, a Gallup study of 2.5 million manager-led teams across 195 countries found that engagement improves when employees communicate daily with their supervisor. Be accountable and communicate. Be honest, be vulnerable, and give real, authentic feedback. People who don’t know what’s happening make up their own stories. Take control of those before the wrong news spreads.

4. Be more social. People are inherently social—check out Wired to Connect for a great read on this; trust is multidimensional. When we blend the two (interpersonal connection with professional competency), we’re more productive and more likely to enjoy coming to work.

5. Show respect. Respect people’s time, energy, and ideas. Make it safe to share unpopular opinions and treat people how you want to be treated. Simple. Human 101.

6. Care more. When we invest in people, they invest in us. John C. Maxwell once said, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Value people, their futures, and their lives outside work. Instead of looking backward at people’s performance, focus forwards on helping them achieve their goals.

7. Give clearer direction. Make it clear what people are supposed to do, how it fits into the big picture, and what success looks like. Then, be surprised when they do it.

8. Reward unity. Incentivise teamwork and collaboration rather than simply putting a values poster on the wall and judging everyone’s performance individually. Make teamwork the way to success, where everyone shares in the spoils—and the failures.

9. Make the space. This stuff doesn’t happen by accident. Make the time and space to check in, schedule team-building activities (just nothing lame, please…) and prioritise it rather than seeing it as a nice-to-have. Think about how you show up.

In summary

• There is a mistrust epidemic creeping into our workplaces

• It’s mostly COVID’s fault, but there are other things too

• Mistrust makes everything feel hard and not fun

• Trust makes things faster, easier, and more enjoyable

• We can build trust by doing nine key things:

  • Giving more praise

  • Set achievable goals
  • Chatting more openly
  • Being more social
  • Showing respect
  • Caring more
  • Giving clearer direction
  • Rewarding unity
  • Making the space.