Trust in the Leader of Collaborative Process Design and Facilitation
SKILL SK-06 | Communication & Inclusion
Trust Building
The sustained relational practice of building credibility, reliability, and good faith with community stakeholders over time. Trust is not a product of a single interaction - it is accumulated through consistent follow-through, honest communication, visible responsiveness, and respect for community knowledge.
How to Develop It
1. Commitment tracking
Keep a personal log of every commitment made to community members. Review it weekly. Before the next interaction with each person, confirm which commitments are pending and update them proactively - before they ask.
2. Between-event contact
Establish a regular biweekly or monthly check-in with key community representatives, not to report project progress but to ask how things are going and whether any concerns have come up. Document what you hear.
3. Proactive acknowledgement practice
After any project change, delay, or failure to deliver, communicate this proactively before the community asks. Draft and review the message before sending. Practice the acknowledgement - what to say, how to say it, and what to offer in response.
Why This Skill Matters
Trust is the medium through which all other SE-GRM skills operate. High-trust environments produce early, honest disclosure of concerns. Low-trust environments produce silence, resistance, and late-stage disputes that are harder and more costly to resolve.
Observable Behaviors
+ Follows through on every commitment made to community members, no matter how small
+ Returns calls and messages promptly, even when there is nothing new to report
+ Acknowledges mistakes and course corrections openly rather than quietly moving on
+ Maintains contact between engagement events, not only when the project needs something
+ Remembers and references what community members have shared in prior interactions
Self-Assessment
Read each Reflective Question below and honestly consider how consistently you demonstrate this in your actual fieldwork, not how you think you should behave, but how you do behave. Then assign a score from 1 (lowest) to 4 (highest):
(1) Not yet developed: Rarely demonstrated in practice
(2) Emerging: Demonstrated sometimes, but inconsistently or only under favorable conditions
(3) Established: Demonstrated reliably in most situations, including moderately challenging ones
(4) Adaptive: Demonstrated reliably even in high-pressure situations, and practitioner actively helps
Common Gaps & Pitfalls
! Treating trust as something that can be built quickly through a good first meeting
! Assuming that providing information is the same as building trust - trust is built through action
! Prioritizing vocal community members and neglecting less visible ones
Connections
SK-07: Community Sensitivity
SK-12: Psychologically Safe Space Creation
SK-24: Trauma-Informed Engagement
Reflective Questions Score from 1 (lowest) to 4 (highest):
I have no outstanding, unacknowledged broken commitments to community members
I maintain contact between formal engagement events
When something changes or goes wrong, I communicate proactively rather than reactively
I can describe what specific community members have told me and how I have responded
Th shared to the public for free courtesy of the
THE CONFLICT RESOLUTION GROUP FOUNDATION
www.coregroup.org.ph * info@coregroup.org.ph
in partnership with SustainABILITIES Lab
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