The foundation of all relationships is trust. When trust is lost, it functions like a sinkhole – it takes down everything else with it! In today’s environment, it seems that many of our typical ways of doing business and ways things have been done in the past have been lost. Trust is hard to build and easy to lose. Unfortunately, in today’s political environment, it seems that trust has crumbled and almost been lost entirely.
Congress is at a 5% approval rating which begs the question, “Who are those five percent?” I think that when you ask most Americans, we have lost trust in many of our elected officials and their ability to do the jobs we elected them to do. The good news is that there is a path forward that is applicable not only to our politicians, but to all of us in our everyday lives to help us rebuild trust. The following are five essential keys to rebuilding broken trust:
- We need to constantly be talking to one another. You can’t just have one conversation with someone and expect to have trust; trust is built through multiple conversations. You can’t go to the gym once and expect to be healthy; you need to go multiple times. You also build trust through transparency and by taking with each other, not at each other.
- We need to have honest, open communication. The biggest problem when it comes to honesty is not what people do say to each other, but what they don’t say. For example, politicians need to share the actual truth that they are afraid to alienate certain parts of their party. They are scared they will not be re-elected and if they compromise, it will show weakness. However in reality, the ability to compromise shows strength.
- We need to hit “reboot” and begin to discuss what we have in common as the building block to move forward.
- We need to create a plan that actually shows we will not find ourselves in our current situation in the future.
- We need to make sure that there are consequences to prove our commitment to rebuilding trust. We need to reward the right behaviors, not the wrong ones.
With these five keys, we can take the very difficult situation that our country is currently in and make it a better tomorrow. Hopefully this is a wake-up call for us all to make sure we have elected officials who understand that trust is critical, are willing to do what it takes to keep that trust trust, and have the courage and strength of character to do what’s best for our country. Having worked with many corporations, associations, and government agencies, I have come to realize that no matter how dire certain situations may be, with the right leadership anything can be overcome. The key question is “What are we willing to do about it?”
