3 Steps To Rebuild Trust After Workplace Conflict

In this episode of the Conflict Skills Podcast, host Simon Goode explores the challenge of rebuilding trust after a conflict, particularly in workplace settings. He outlines a three-phase approach: clarifying expectations, facilitating resolution through empathy and structured reflection, and maintaining positive momentum with ongoing feedback. Throughout, Simon shares practical tools and strategies for managers, team leaders, and colleagues to support trust-building and navigate post-conflict dynamics effectively.

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TIMESTAMPS: 

00:00 Trust Erosion After Conflict

03:05 Rebuilding Trust: A Three-Phase Approach

06:28 Focus on Short-Term Conflict Management

09:43 Empathetic Listening Without Solutions

12:56 Restorative Justice and Empathy Guidelines

16:54 Breaking Crisis Cycle for Trust

20:58 Cultivating Positive Work Relationships

22:32 Contact & Support the Podcast

Transcript

0:03

Hello, and welcome back to the Conflict Skills Podcast. I'm your host, professional mediator, Simon Good. I set up this podcast to provide free resources and tools for dealing with conflict, whether that was connected to workplace conflict or relationships outside of work. So if that sounds like the kind of thing that's useful for you, please consider pressing subscribe. In the episode today, I'm going to be talking about the topic of rebuilding trust after conflict. Now this is a very common challenge for me coming in as a workplace mediator when I'm dealing with teams and there's been some type of incident or an altercation or, you know, sometimes it's a critical incident that might have happened within the team. At times it's just an argument internally between two of the people, for example, a team leader and one of the staff, or it might have been triggered by external circumstances, like conflict with the customer, for example. And in all of these situations, the path to rebuild trust can be very difficult to identify. Unfortunately, what often happens is that people are hypersensitive after they've been involved in conflict, which is natural, it's part of our, you know, the fight or flight mechanism that our tribal brain goes into. If there's been conflict historically, then, of course, it would be more likely that it's going to happen again. So we can understand the hypervigilant stance that people might take, but the challenge is that there's so much room then for crossed wires and miscommunication to happen even when people have good intentions because you are working from effectively an empty bucket of trust between the two of them. You know, it doesn't take much for the whatever goodwill that exists between them to flow out. I often think about that as a good analogy to talk about trust. It's like this bucket that exists between the two of us, and when there's been incidents or conflict that's happened, it's a bit like there's been some holes that have been drilled into the bottom. So even when there's gestures of goodwill, someone's kind, they smile, they, well I am doing the right thing, I did say good morning to them, okay that's fine, but we can certainly understand why they might not have really taken the good morning seriously given the fact that, you know, a week before you were using a lot of colorful language when you were talking about them or something like that. It's like, of course, these gestures of goodwill don't make much difference in the context of, you know, a a hyper tense relationship. And so how do we rebuild trust? I often find this a very challenging thing myself, but when I talk to people who are in mediation about, well, how are you gonna rebuild trust here? Nobody has any idea. The parties certainly don't often have much of an idea, but I've noticed that even managers and leaders and business owners often also struggle with this idea of how do we get things back on track. We wanna shift the focus. We wanna keep things solution focused and future focused. Those two tend to be the way that I hear it talked about. Like, let's make sure that we're future focused. Let's make sure that we're solution focused. And, of course, that makes sense, and we can understand why business and the team would be, you know, very well advised to follow that as a focus. Like, how do we do it? How do we adjust our perception? How do we stop this miscommunication and the drops in the bucket from erasing any goodwill that develops there? And then how can we start to rebuild the goodwill between the two of us, I suppose? For me, I think about the process of rebuilding trust in three distinct phases. First, we need to clarify expectations, and I'm going to talk about how you can provide some support as a team leader, as a manager, or as even a colleague on the sidelines When there's conflict that's going on and you're wanting to be of some support there, I actually think it's about short term goals and short term review, etcetera. In the next phase, I often think about that's the chance where we resolve what's still sitting there, And I'll talk about some options that you can use to take a coaching approach to help people progress through the conflict and shift their focus from the incident from the past towards the future. And then in the third phase, I often think about it as how can we maintain the positive momentum? As you begin to see some of the small positive signs of the behaviors that you're hoping for, how can you make sure that they don't stop by letting them know that it's making a difference, by giving them some positive reinforcement, that kind of thing? So first, we clarify expectations. That's the very short term. Next, we look at some way of resolving things, etcetera, discussing, digesting almost is one way to think about it. And then the third phase is about momentum. So let's first think about that initial phase after conflict. What I often suggest people to begin to think about in terms of trust is that we can't rebuild trust. Like, I actually often say to them that let's just assume that it doesn't exist. Like, a working definition of trust is very difficult to come up with. Ultimately, it's this subjective thing that we've both got in our head about the relationship that exists between the two of us that we can't measure and no one can see it. You know, it's not tangible in that sense. So trust in itself is this subjective element that's sort of in our heads, so to speak. What we can work on and we can identify and measure and make progress in is the expectations. I often suggest to people that let's just replace that idea of trust with very clear expectations. And then trust often develops naturally when those expectations are fulfilled, When someone tells me that this is what they're gonna do and then they actually go ahead and do it, that's the point naturally where I begin to trust them more because I've learned from that behavior that they've demonstrated. Right? It's just like obviously. And so you're not gonna feel like you trust them until you start to see them doing what they say that they're going to do. And the amount of time that that takes for you to start to feel trusting towards them, so to speak, probably depends on the amount of time and the level of betrayal or whatever happened to break the trust in the first place. If this has been a pattern of two years of very erratic behavior from them where you haven't know what to expect, then you probably need to see quite a long time of them doing what they say they're gonna do. But that's the process. It's very clear expectations, and then those expectations are followed through with. Now if there's been an incident, like a big argument on-site and one of the staff members has walked off and gone home or something like that, I still often suggest focusing on the expectations in the very short term. Even just contacting them both and getting clear on who's gonna be doing what and letting them know that they're not to contact each other until you have a chance to talk to them on-site tomorrow morning or something like that. So we're really working towards short term goals. We're focusing on short term expectations, and the focus of the discussion or our requests, so to speak, is on their behavior. And then moving forward, let's say you talk to them the next morning or, you know, depend on the situation, it might just be emails back and forth or maybe you were involved in the conflict yourself. We've moved from that that afternoon and that day towards the next short term period, which is probably the rest of the week or the next day or something like that. And I really do think the best thing to focus on are short term goals, like how can the two of you just keep things civil in this week? You know, we can look at other options for resolving things longer term later. We've scheduled some time in the diary to go through it together with the senior manager next week. For now, how can you make sure that things don't bubble up to the surface? So that's the short term goal. Like, how can the two of you keep a level head? What needs to happen to prevent this problem from getting worse right now? We're looking at tangible metrics like, you know, expect the two of you to greet each other in the morning or make sure that you send this information to each other or reply to an email or something like that, and the focus is on the behavior. I actually think the way that you might think about your support if you're not one of the people who are involved in the conflict in this early stage is almost like a bit of an accidental mediator. Like, you're mediating between the two of them. They think this should happen. What do you reckon? They'd like you to do this. Is that something that's feasible for you, or do you think something else might be more realistic? Like, I'm just sort of facilitating a bit of negotiation. In some situations where I'm the boss, I'm just gonna tell them what's gonna happen. You need to do this. You need to do this. In other situations, it might just be asking them what they plan to do and then communicating that where possible to the other party. Even if it's just to let them know, like, they're not planning to come here. They're not planning to contact you. They're not planning to go to their lawyers. They're not planning to make a formal complaint. Whatever. Like, if there's some type of reassurance maybe that you might be able to offer even in terms of things that they're not going to do. So I think that's probably the surface level of something that we should always be focused on, clarifying those expectations and making sure that people know what to expect. That provides them with certainty, which is one of the factors that really helps for de escalation, letting people know what's gonna happen when, what they can do to prepare, giving them a task to work on in the meantime, letting them know when you're gonna come back to them for the next update. All of those kind of things tend to be incredibly helpful for de escalating conflict, also in sales conversations and a whole bunch of other sort of business communication as well, by the way. Now parenting relationships too, of course. So we've gone through those clarifying the expectations. The next phase to me in rebuilding trust is some type of resolution. The way I think about this, like, the analogy and the metaphor, I think that actually is accurate is we want to help them to digest what has happened. And digestion, when we eat something, for example, it's a process. It takes some time and, you know, there's there's, downfalls or problems that can be caused by speeding up the digestion too fast. Right? So this is a process. And so my support that I offer here often is empathy mixed with coaching. I want to be an active listener, maybe meet with them and say, how are you traveling? What's going on for you at the moment? How's that all sitting? How has that impacted you? Are there particular things that are, bouncing through your head at the moment? Are there particular things that you're worried about or concerned about? Which parts of this did you expect? Which parts of this have caught you off guard? All of those kind of just active listening questions can be incredibly helpful for just allowing the other person a chance to process. And I don't think you necessarily need to give them any kind of an adequate response, if you know what I mean. Like, I think some people are worried about doing this kind of debriefing because they don't know what the answer is. They think that the expectation is that they'll be able to give some advice, like, this is what you should do, and they don't know what to do. But I actually don't know that that is needed, that you give them the advice. And after an incident, it's probably not the best timing to give them a solution or to give them advice anyway. Like, they're probably already still revved up and probably not seeing the situation very clearly themselves. So you even if you did know what to do and you jumped in with the solution, it might not work. So I I don't think that that is something that's necessarily needed here. Sometimes a response just like, that sounds really hard, or, wow, that sounds really full on, or, man, I bet that wasn't what you expected when you arrived in the office this morning, or, my goodness, I was aware that there were some problems, but I wasn't aware that things had reached this level or, you know, just far out. It just sounds really stressful. And and what do you need right now? What's gonna be helpful for you to keep your head above water just for the rest of the day? Like, it's just that normalizing and validating and acknowledging the challenges that the other person's been through. If you're a team leader, you need to do it a little bit more carefully because you might want to, put in put effort into being seen to be impartial. Like, as a team leader, you can you can feel like you're not taking sides, but what you're actually aiming for is that the staff know that you're not taking sides. So you it's about perceived impartiality, not just whether or not you are impartial. So one of the ways that you can do the active listening and still maintain that perceived impartiality is like attributing it to them. From your perspective, that sounds like that was really out of left field and quite an unreasonable request at the end of the day. Or from where you sit, it sounds like this has been like dropping a bombshell and then leaving it in your lap for you to process, and it's effectively giving you a problem that you didn't cause at least from where you sit and from how you see things. So that last bit there, this is your point of view. Right? And then I'll, acknowledge it and summarize it, etcetera. That's one of the ways that we can still demonstrate the empathy, but maybe not give them the impression that we agree with them. You know, we don't want a minimum we don't want to, get in the way of them considering options for them to changing their behavior by giving the signal that they're already perfect or something like that. I don't know. I guess all of this depends on the person and the relationship and, you know, the context that you're working in as well as to how professional and formal this is or how informal. And you might have different relationships with different staff members, etcetera, as well, of course. So I think that just general empathy tends to be helpful. And then if there's been an incident, like a big argument or something that's happened, the other person's blown up at them and sworn at them or a customer's been particularly abusive or something like that, I really like the four questions that Terry O'Connell uses in his restorative justice framework. Terry O'Connell was a police officer, and I can remember watching him give a conference presentation many years ago. And he was talking about these particular questions that he uses for victims of crime, really violent, horrible crimes and, you know, often the it's the family members of the victim if they're deceased. And so he would ask these four questions. What happened? What were you thinking at the time? What have you been thinking about since? And what needs to happen to make things right? So I'll say them again. What happened? That's number one. Number two is what were you thinking at the time? Number three is what what have you been thinking about since? And then number four is what needs to happen to make things right? Now I use a very similar approach when I'm debriefing or, you know, wanting to work towards a resolution after workplace conflict as well. What happened? You know, they said this. They did this. It was in front of these people. Blah blah blah. That sounds full on, etcetera, a bit of empathy. And then what were you thinking at the time? I absolutely love that question because it encourages them to put an interpretation on their own behavior back then. It caught me off guard or I wasn't expecting it or, you know, I had prepared. And so at that time, I didn't realize how serious this was or whatever. It's like we encourage them to begin to tell a story, and it's putting it in this temporal space where it changes over time. And I like that question of what were you thinking because it encourages them to move away from any of the distressing emotions that they might describe in that situation. Like, when they're sitting there and they're in conflict, probably their heart's racing and their palms are sweaty and it just feels bloody horrible. And if they were to describe the emotions, they would say it was gut wrenching, it was traumatizing, it was whatever, like, it was just horrible. I felt so stressed, I felt overwhelmed, I felt helpless, I felt trapped. That's fine. That's probably true. In the moment, you would have felt like that. That feeling, of course, is part of our brain developing a metabolic plan of what we need to do next. So the more trapped that you were feeling, it effectively means that your brain was interpreting the situation as a threat. So it was planning on an active plan to get out of it, like fight or flight. So all of those feelings are true, and they're probably quite valid if the other person was being a real jerk or being really intimidating or something. But I love that other way of asking the question of what were you thinking at the time Because it moves from all of that negative connotation, negative valence that people put on the emotions. Effectively, they were just escalated, but they'll describe it as feeling overwhelmed. But when you ask a question like, what were you thinking at the time? It encourages them to tell a story about it. It's this really interesting thing that happens. It's this narrative that begins to develop. And then the next question, what have you been thinking about since? It encourages them to step back and almost, like, take this bigger picture perspective of the whole situation. It encourages them to think about how their changing has shifted moving forward. And, obviously, the implication there is that it might continue to shift moving forward after this. But it also is like a way of encouraging them to step out of that immediate crisis moment, the actual incident, the actual situation that happened. And that, I think, is one of the reasons why trust can't develop between people is that they're reliving that past event. It's like it has been programmed into them as an automatic reaction, maybe even at a subconscious level. So when they see that other person's face or something, it they see their face goes red, you know, their fists clenched and that kind of thing. So stepping back in that question of what have you been thinking about since, it removes them and creates this natural I guess it's a differentiation or something like that. And then the final stage, what needs to happen to make things right? Again, I absolutely love the phrasing of this question because it's focused on behavior. Like, what needs to happen? Who needs to do what? What needs to be different? What needs to be in place? What structures do the two of you need? What, clarity is needed in terms of your, job descriptions? It encourages us to think about very practical next steps that we might be able to take. And even if they think the other person, I don't know, like, needs to apologize or they need to take responsibility for their behaviors or something, it's like, okay. What do they need to do to give you the impression that they are beginning to take responsibility for their behaviors? It's over time. How can they demonstrate this to you over time? And then the focus is what needs to happen? What do they need to do? What do you need to see or hear from them? Or what else needs to be different for you to consider this issue to be resolved? And, again, I don't know that you necessarily need to be the one that comes in with the solutions here. It is often that coaching approach of what do the two of you need and what do the two of you need to do, which encourages them to start to take responsibility for the plan, for their part in, hopefully, contributing to the issues, but at the very least, contributing to that rebuilding process of trust. So those are the first two steps. First, we want to clarify those expectations as carefully as we can. Next, we want to resolve the issue, whether we take just the empathy kind of approach or you might build in a bit of those questions from restorative justice, if that's appropriate. And then the final step, I often think, is about momentum. We want to give feedback when you begin to see positive changes in behavior. Even if all you're seeing is a slight reduction in the amount of problems, that's something that you should give some positive feedback about. It's not as bad as it used to be. What are the two of you doing? It seems to be making a difference. And we don't want to assume that just because we're still seeing problems and the bad stuff and we're not seeing any of the good behaviors yet, the good stuff that we're working towards, that it's not coming. So be on alert to look for opportunities to catch people doing the right thing. We're wanting as much as possible to give positive, feedback when they do something that's making the situation better. Even if we've observed that there seems to be less tension in the lunchroom or you've noticed that other members of the team seem to be walking around with less pressure on their shoulders or something, like giving them some positive feedback there around, look. This is really hard. The two of you are being really mature in the face of a very challenging situation. You're working in close proximity to someone that you've been in conflict with last week. It's not an easy spot to be. Let's just call a spade a spade. And I can see how much effort the two of you are making because it seems to be really making a difference with the way the rest of the team are carrying themselves today. So I just wanted to acknowledge that and say thank you. And then finally, I think that grow model of coaching can be a nice way of maintaining the momentum a level of improvement between the two of you. You don't need to be friends. You don't need to be mates, but what does a positive working relationship look like? What do the two of you need to be in place or need to be different for that to be achievable? The r, the reality is about how are things at the moment or how things used to be, that kind of thing. Where are you getting stuck right now? Where have you noticed that there's the low hanging fruit that you've been able to improve things quicker than you expected? The o would be the options. What do you think might work? How are the two of you going to continue to improve this? What's working in terms of your communication? What could be tweaked there? Are there other people that could be involved or other supports that might be helpful? That's the o. We wanna brainstorm options or facilitate brainstorming of them, generating options. And then the final step is about way forward. So what's the next step? What does the next two weeks look like? What are you gonna be focusing on over the next month? And I think that grow model of coaching, it's a way of handing them back the responsibility for the relationship because they are the one that articulates the goal of how they want things to be and then develops a plan and the steps that they're gonna take to move things in that direction. So those are overall those three steps that I tend to focus on, clarifying the expectations, something about the restorative justice or resolution, and then the final stage of maintaining the positive momentum. But what do you find helpful when you're in situations of needing to rebuild trust? Have some of those ideas resonated with you, and maybe there's something that you might be able to apply in your work relationship or maybe a situation that you're dealing with outside of work, or maybe you've got a slightly different approach that you found that works for you? I'd love to hear from you. The best way to get in touch if you have a question, feedback, an idea for a future topic for the podcast, for example, you can email me. It's podcast@simongood.com, and that domain name is sim0ng,doubleo,de.com. If you would like to support the podcast and if it has been helpful, the best thing you could do is leave a positive review. Thank you so much. I can see there's been a few positive reviews again come through in the past week, and they always really do make me smile. And thank you in advance if that's something that you're prepared to do. It really does make a massive difference for little podcasts like this one. But thank you very much for listening. I do hope that it's been helpful, and hopefully see you again in a future episode of the Conflict Skills Podcast. All the best. Bye for now.