Building Trust in the Workplace through Gathering Feedback and Taking Action

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Disciplinary Grounding

           Building trust in any relationship, whether personal or professional, takes time and effort for everyone involved. In a workplace setting, it becomes increasingly important to build trust among coworkers and leaders. One-way leaders can do this is by gathering feedback from their employees and taking actions to address feedback received.  

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            There are several communication principles and theories that are foundational to building relationships and trust including systems theory and active listening. Interpersonal communication, which is defined as communication between individuals, is an important communication principle for building relationships and trust (Hartley, 1999).  One of the foundational theories within interpersonal communication is uncertainty reduction theory, or URT. This theory, developed by Charles Berger, “focuses on how human communication is used to gain knowledge and create understanding” (Griffin et al., 2023, p. 108). Berger identified axioms, or self-evident truths, that relate back to relationship development (Griffin et al., 2023, p. 110). One axiom is verbal communication, which is critical to gathering feedback and building trust in the workplace. As more verbal communication happens between individuals, the increased reduction in uncertainty among them. When a leader walks into a room of individuals who will be providing feedback, they can reduce the amount of uncertainty by making conversation with each other and being inviting. The leaders also can reduce uncertainty by practicing self-disclosure, another axiom, when responding to a piece of feedback. For example, if an individual shares they are uncomfortable with recent news articles about the company, the leader can self-disclose their personal feelings about it as well to validate and understand how the other person is feeling. Another axiom that aligns well with verbal communication is non-verbal warmth. If a leader enters the environment making conversation, smiling, and showing positive non-verbal cues, it can help to reduce uncertainty with other individuals. In contrast, if a leader enters the environment expressionless and closed off, it can increase the level of uncertainty with individuals, likely resulting in their unwillingness to be open with their feedback. Leaders must lean on communication among their peers, managers, and employees to help meet business objectives and create organizational stability. Especially in times during uncertainty and organizational instability, people rely on communication with others to help reduce uncertainty.

Gathering feedback is one-step in a multi-step process to build trust with employees. Feedback received is worth nothing if leaders do not plan to take action to implement real change. In my personal experience, there have been several situations where feedback was solicited from leaders, provided by employees, and nothing happens. Employees have openly shared with their peers, and some with their leaders directly, that the feedback sessions are pointless and nothing changes. This can lead to impacts to workplace culture and in some instances, so severe that the culture is damaged long-term.

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Significance

             The significance of building trust between employees and their leaders and/or leadership team cannot be ignored. Great Place to Work, a global leader in workplace culture, highlights the importance of trust in the workplace by stating “high-trust cultures have half the attrition turnover of industry competitors…have accelerated rates of innovation…[and] see more employees go above and beyond to deliver” (Great Place to Work, 2023). When gathering feedback, leaders have a unique role in helping foster trust by creating a transparent environment, by actively listening to employees, taking immediate actions, and identifying long-term solutions, and regularly communicating what has been done and what will be done to positively impact workplace culture and business objectives.

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Design Prospectus

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Objective

             The objective of my project is to create easy guides to help leaders understand the importance of building trust in the workplace through gathering feedback and taking action. Building trust does not necessarily come easy to everyone and the guides are there to help remind leaders of the easy steps they can take to create a more positive, inclusive, and transparent culture within their organization.

Project Outline

Context

            The setting of my project will be in a workplace. As I was establishing my vision for the project, I was developing it with a large corporation in mind; however, my goal will be to create artifacts which can be utilized in any workplace setting whether it be a company of 10 employees or 10,000.

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Participants

            The artifacts would be created to be independently used; however, if a company was to implement usage of the artifacts, there would need to be a clear communication plan identified to help leaders understand the intent, goal, benefit, and process.

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Design

            The artifacts I plan to create are a tipsheet, infographics to display in an workplace setting, and a badge-sized card with simple reminders about gathering feedback and the importance of building trust. Visually, I would like these artifacts to be modern and colorful to make the process feel approachable for everyone, rather than intimidating.

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Tipsheet: this would be a simplified, one-page visual highlighting the five major steps in the process and brief statements with tackle actions and friendly reminders for leaders to refer back to. I would like to have at least four items per step; some of which are noted below.

Seek Feedback

• Identify diverse group of individuals to gather feedback from to ensure a wide variety of responses

• Tip #2 TBD

• Tip #3 TBD

• Tip #4 TBD

Listen

• Listen to understand, not respond  

• Avoid distractions such as your phone and other side conversations

• Tip #3 TBD

• Tip #4 TBD

Respond

• Take a few moments to think about the feedback and how best to respond; it is acceptable if you need to say you need time to reflect

• Avoid using words that create conflict or invalidate the individuals’ thoughts and feelings such as ‘no’, ‘never’, and ‘can’t’

• Tip #3 TBD

• Tip #4 TBD

Act

• Identify actions that can result in small wins – not everything will be able to be solved right away

• Seek assistance from others depending on what actions need to be taken – it is not on you as the leader to solve for everything

• Actively engage in the action progress, remove roadblocks, and ensure timely completion

• Tip #4 TBD

Communicate

• Follow up with individuals who provided feedback timely – within one week to share what you heard, what immediate actions you took, and what will require long-term support

• Continue to communicate as actions are in work and/or completed

• Celebrate all wins – small and big to help show individuals their feedback was valued and made an impact

• Tip #4 TBD
   

Badge-sized card: this would be a simplified version of the tipsheet above for leaders to keep with them either with their personnel badge or in their pocket or wallet to refer back to in times of immediate need. The size would be 3.375” x 2.125” (size of a credit card) and would streamline some of the tips above, due to size constraints.

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Infographics: fun, modern, and colorful infographics to display in the workplace to remind everyone that their voices matter and highlighting completed actions and/or activities led by leadership to help demonstrate the importance of feedback and building trust with the teams.

            Example of infographic sayings:

• Your voice matters!

• Leadership closed on X% of actions based on your feedback
   

Process

            The process to create the artifacts will be to develop materials that do not take away from the key message and intent but also a modern and colorful, especially the infographics. I will make mockups of the artifacts and request some of my peers in my own workplace to review to determine if changes need to be made, along with input from my professor. If this were implemented in a real workplace, the artifacts would need to go through an approval process and likely vetted through Human Resources and Legal, depending on the size of the company. There would then be a detailed communication plan created to ensure it was rolled out in the most efficient way.

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References

Griffin, E., Ledbetter, A., Sparks, G. (2023). Uncertainty Reduction Theory by Charles Berger. A first look at                      communication theory (p. 108-119). (11th ed.). McGraw Hill.

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Hartley, P. (1999). Interpersonal communication (p. 16-28). Taylor & Francis Group.

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Kitterman, T. (2023 January 11). Why and how to build trust in the workplace. A Great Place to Work. Retrieved             March 6, 2024 from https://www.greatplacetowork.com/resources/blog/why-and-how-to-build-trust-in-the-workplace.

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