Repairing a Breach of Trust in a Team

A great friend and colleague of mine, Wendy Frasier, just completed an exciting doctoral research project where she studied what team members did to work through and repair a breach of trust. She came up with six very insightful findings, which I mention here briefly:

- The teams that successfully worked through a breach of trust made more attempts to repair trust and matched an appropriate remedy to respond to the nature of the violation;

- They took an appropriate amount of time to engage in repair efforts;

- Group members were intentional about engagement, relationship building and Use of Self;

- People acknowledged their part in the violation(s) and were tenacious in the repair efforts;

- The groups generally had the right people and accessed additional people if they needed help; and

- Effective leadership within these groups influenced the repair strategy and overall success.

Thanks to the results of this study, there is now a clearer, evidence-based way to look at the success factors of working through a breach of trust in teams. You can learn more about Wendy's work here: http://wendyf.com/index.php