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Dealing with Distrust

Cathy Ivancic

February 1996

Many employee-owned firms are trying new ways for people to solve problems in groups. It might be in a work team, a cross-functional group, an ESOP committee, or a task force. Odds are that if you participate in a group you will find yourself in situations where people disagree. In fact, if you're like most of us, there are usually one or two people with whom you almost always disagree. After some time you come to distrust their opinions before they even open their mouth. That person is probably doing the same thing when you talk.

The Effect of Institutionalized Distrust

Distrust can go beyond one person to whole categories of people. Maybe the people in accounting feel this way about salespeople, and many rank-and-file employees feel this way about managers. This "institutionalized" distrust creates gridlock that limits the creative ways we can look at a problem and constrains our ability to find a good solution. If people can't listen to each other, they can't solve problems together.

Leaders and employee owners at Republic Engineered Steels in Ohio recognized that the hourly and salaried employees had been operating for years under this kind of "institutionalized" distrust. As a steel manufacturer, Republic was starting with a traditional industrial environment that was built on mistrust. "Don't trust those guys. They always watch out for their own interests," is what you learned when entering the ranks of one of these groups. Each time someone did something that appeared to be "in their interest" the wall of distrust was built a little higher.

To be successful, this company needed to bring down these walls of mistrust. Theoretically, employee ownership creates a situation where operating "in your own interest" is in everyone's common interest. But reality shows us that people must first learn how to trust each other before they can effectively work toward common goals. So how do you get started in the trust-building process?

Consider the Other Person's Interests

A few years ago I asked some employees at Republic how they started building trust. One of the most combative hourly employees sat down and drew me a picture. "I assume people are going to do things in their own interest," he said drawing a circle on a scrap of paper in front of him. "But now we have to understand the other side's interests." He drew a line down the middle of the ball and colored the right side of the ball with a red marker. Then he put stick figures on opposite sides of the ball. Using this diagram, he illustrated the first step of the trust-building process: understanding the other person's point of view.

The ball represents any issue about which people disagree at your company. The person who is standing on the right side of the ball will say that it is red. The person on the other side of the ball will maintain that the ball is white. Both people are partially right and wrong about what color the ball really is. In order to start the trust-building process, they both need to "walk around the ball" and see the other side's perspective. Mistrust often comes from a lack of knowledge about different perspectives on the same issue. The process of seeing the whole issue allows us to identify what our common interests are.

Cathy Ivancic is a consultant and co-owner at Workplace Development Inc. Since 1985, she has helped more than 100 ESOP companies enhance ESOP communications and develop an ownership culture. She is active in national organizations that promote shared ownership and has served on the NCEO's board of directors and as an officer of the Ohio chapter of the ESOP Association.She can be reached at civancic@workplacedevelopment.com.

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