When people arrive one by one at a workshop, you can tell from their expressions, behaviours and first words whether it will be easy to gain and keep their trust.

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Build trust from the get-go

Some participants aren’t sure if this workshop is the best way to spend their time. You observe them immediately diving into their laptops just after arriving. Or they haven’t disconnected from other work when they join your online workshop, keeping their videos off or staring into the camera without saying anything (they’re actually looking at their email).

On the other hand, you have people who arrive with an expression of curiosity, somewhere between scepticism and excitement. They reveal their disposition with a dry “hello” or a smiling “good morning”. That moment of arrival is where I test the waters, for example, by asking whether I am pronouncing someone’s name correctly, commenting on nice backgrounds, and maybe even having a light conversation about the weather or another neutral topic. These first spontaneous interactions at the beginning can already speak volumes.

After testing the waters and before getting into some significant workshop activities, it makes sense to go through a couple of steps to build trust amongst the participants.Trust in being led by you as the facilitator, trust in the ability to co-create something meaningful in this group, trust in the agenda and reaching the desired outcome, etc. I see the two levers of trust being the feeling of safe connection, the so-called “safe space”, and the feeling of certainty, which I like to call “structure”. These are two basic human needs that play an important role in gaining trust.

To start building that safe space at the start of a workshop, I have made it a habit to always begin with a check-in moment. I would ask all participants to share a personal experience related to the topic in order to expose each other’s vulnerability. Sharing some vulnerability, not too much, is the first step towards feeling safe to open up.

“I learned the hard way that overwhelm is the enemy of trust.”

When continuing with sharing the agenda and the goals, I avoid going into too much detail. I learned the hard way that overwhelm is the enemy of trust. A sense of purpose combined with the prospect of progress usually gets everyone ready to embark on a workshop journey together. This provides the “structure” to establish a feeling of certainty. It also brings them on the same page, inducing some feeling of belonging. Now, we have a more comfortable feeling because of safety and structure. The group  is ready to get instructions on the first workshop activities.

The biochemicals of trust

While kickstarting a workshop with these first trust-building activities, my aim is primarily to have the participants generate oxytocin, a hormone that is produced by the hypothalamus and released into the bloodstream.

Both emotional and physical intimacy trigger oxytocin. The physical approach might not be appropriate during a workshop. Not everyone likes hugging on the job. However, I am convinced that having a dog walking around in the workshop space for everyone to pet would stimulate social interaction and bonding. Not only physical intimicay but also the emotional intimacy that comes from sharing personal perspectives and embarking on a journey together, hooked into a commonly shared purpose, spikes oxytocin levels. These kinds of activities trigger a tribal sense of belonging and stimulate the release of oxytocin. Oxytocin promotes bonding between people. It facilitates generosity and trust.

Oxytocin even goes beyond facilitating trust.

Oxytocin also activates the release of nitric oxide and anandamide. Both biochemicals are extremely useful for co-creation. Nitric oxide dilates our blood vessels and lowers our blood pressure, resulting in better circulation and brain neuroplasticity. It promotes learning and memory by enhancing blood flow to the involved regions in the brain. Anandamide promotes lateral thinking – it is called our “brain’s marijuana”, and it improves cognitive function, motivation, learning and memory. Anandamide relieves anxiety and stimulates connection between people.

Facilitation is about maintaining trust

Say your participants start feeling anxiety and higher stress levels at some point during a workshop. It is hard to stimulate oxytocin-driven social connection when this happens. It is not because you created a comfortable start at the beginning of the workshop that you are out of the woods.

Participants can easily get triggered into a stress response during a workshop for many reasons. Maybe there is a disagreement, a difficult personality to work with, an overwhelming task at hand, etc. While facilitating, you are trying to keep everyone engaged by maintaining their level of trust despite all the unforeseen challenges the co-creation may bring.

The level of trust in the facilitator and the quality of the co-creation is often like a rollercoaster going up, down, up, down, up and down again, at different speeds. It’s almost like gravity pulling things back down whenever you make efforts to build a safe space and encourage everyone to participate in a constructive conversation. Trust can be leaking out imperceptibly, or you might have misinterpreted some important alarm bells as a facilitator.

In other words, it is not straightforward to know the level of trust during a workshop. But it is one of the most important success indicators for a facilitator. When participants stop trusting the facilitator’s ability, together with his or her program, their engagement drops together with their commitment to take any action on outcomes.

How can you tell whether you are a trusted facilitator?

In sales, the concept of “mirroring” is often used to build trust. A salesperson mirrors certain positions, gestures, and even their client’s tone of voice in a subtle way. As a result, they will know they have earned enough trust when the roles switch: their client naturally starts mimicking their behaviour without being aware of it.

This simple concept is based on mirror neurons, a concept that is still controversial in neuroscience. Mirror neurons are neurons that are both active when you perform a particular action and when you see someone else doing that same action. Therefore, it has been said that these neurons play an important role in understanding actions performed by others. They help us mimic what others are doing and understand their intentions and state of mind. That’s why they are perceived as important in learning and feeling empathy.

In my own experience, I learned that mirroring by participants is an indicator of their trust in me. When I facilitate, I pay close attention to whether any of the participants are picking up my enthusiasm or the way I tell a story, recap or introduce something. The ease at which they go along with me on the journey and how they mirror my state, tone of voice and behaviour shows me the extent to which I have earned their trust. When I notice no one is feeling it, they are not mimicking my enthusiasm or behaviour, I know something is off, and I have to invest again in building trust.

I also notice how the presence of a highly trusted person, like a CEO or admired expert, strongly influences opinions and behaviour. The opinions and behaviours in the group seem to heavily gravitate towards the opinion and behaviour of the most trusted person. I have been in workshops where a highly trusted person would start expressing doubts and criticism of the workshop, and suddenly more than half of the group would mirror this behaviour. I guess this is also why participants don’t like it when a facilitator expresses their opinion. We intuitively know that when a facilitator is trusted, they will easily influence participants’ state of mind by expressing their thoughts. Trust equals influence.

Build and maintain trust for everyone’s advantage

I have created my own tactics for using mirroring to my advantage. Building a safe space, creating belonging and providing structure and a sense of progress helps me be perceived as trustworthy. When I sense a good level of trust, I try to ramp up the level of enthusiasm and energy by acting out the desired behaviour, expecting it to be mirrored. I believe that building trust makes my excitement more contagious. Conversely, losing trust means losing my influence. And not bringing the right energy when I have the trust is a lost opportunity.

Next time you are building a safe space and increasing trust by providing structure, be aware that you are also increasing your power to influence. Try to nurture enthusiasm by being enthusiastic yourself. You will notice you have a lot more impact on the spirit of the group than you might think.

I would love to hear about your take on trust as a facilitator. We cover trust in the “Prepare for success” and “Apply facilitative leadership” courses.

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Happy Captaineering is managing your state,

Alwin

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