Who Should Read This Book

This book is designed to help anyone who has the desire to cultivate trusting relationships with the people with whom they work and live. You may feel that your workplace has a fairly healthy level of trust and you want to build upon it because you know it will give you and your colleagues a competitive edge in the marketplace. Or you may see signs that trust is vulnerable in your organization. The “grapevine” may be in overdrive, relationships may be breaking down, people may not be following through on their commitments, climate survey results may be less than desirable, and people may be leaving the company. Your instincts may be telling you that “something is just not quite right” in your work environment.

Our focus is for anyone at any level of responsibility who values relationships and wants to understand what trust means—how it's built, how it's broken, and how it may be rebuilt in order to create more effective connections. We find that people want trust; they just aren't sure how to go about fostering it. For many, building trust—and more importantly rebuilding it—may seem like an overwhelming task. Here, we help you, and we help you learn how to help those around you.

We explore the specific behaviors that build trusting relationships, pinpoint the behaviors that contribute to subtle and not-so-subtle breaches of trust, and explain the actions you can take to learn to trust again. Trust and Betrayal in the Workplace will help you understand and appreciate the complex dynamics of trust and betrayal. Your understanding of trust will be improved—as will your awareness of the variety of ways betrayal occurs and its consequences. This book serves as a comprehensive reference and practical guide to building trust-based relationships between individuals, within and among teams, and throughout organizations—both in good times and in challenging times. You can use what you learn in this book both at work and at home, to connect with others, and to connect with yourself.