Trust Makeover is meant to boost declining morale and rebuild broken confidence. By rebuilding trust, role players can reverse a downward pattern of ineffective communication, declining performance and cynical behavior. Trust rebuilding can be achieved by developing specific vignettes, role swaps and frequent meetings.
Trust Makeover has practical learning outcomes: (1) To enhance inter-group performance (Objective One), (2) To enable more effective work group management (Objective Two), and (3) To enact quick response methods for addressing confidence grievances (Objective Three). Objective One can be performed by sharing information more frequently between group members. Objective Two can be performed by setting up measurements of trust levels by voting on a 1-5 scale. (Five flash cards for each number (1-5) can be handed to classmates in order to vote on trust level.) Tallying final votes should show whether trust has been rebuilt or not. Objective Three can be performed by creating a mini Task Force group who should act as a referee.
This exercise should: (1) enhance interpersonal skills (by engaging in prolonged discussions on resolving different trust rebuilding situations), (2) make participants more culturally sensitive (by exploring all sorts of differences accounting for declining trust), (3) enable participants to engage broader audiences in order to help rebuild trust and (4) enable participants to effectively manage conflict situations.
The Trust Makeover exercise can be performed, more specifically, by:
(1) Setting Context. This means participants start by explaining a situation in which trust has been broken and needs to be rebuilt. The situation can be presented in class in a story form by one or more students. For example, a deteriorating trust situation can be about two co-workers sharing a piece of information about department head. Both agree shared information should be kept secret. One week later, one of them confides to a third co-worker who happens not to particularly like the other co-worker. The secret becomes public during a water cooler break few days later. The disclosure causes huge embarrassment to the manager and trust is broken. (2) Rebuilding Trust. Participants are seated in three circles: one of two students representing the two co-workers and common co-coworker; a second of manager and two other students representing management; and a third one of two or three students representing external referees. (Participants can make up any sort of situations developing from the water cooler discussion which has lead to the word being spread.) (3) Decision Making. This step involves voting by a decision made by deliberating circles. Voting is made using flash cards as mentioned above.
Overall, rebuilding trust is a painful and prolonged but important process in order to maintain group harmony by enhancing communication, effectively managing differences and managing conflict. The used exercise helps participants engage more practically in a trust rebuilding situation.
