Your team just told you they're burned out.
What you say in the next 30 seconds
will either build trust or destroy it forever.

Most leaders think trust is built through big gestures and annual reviews.

But after coaching hundreds of executives, I've learned the truth: trust lives in those split-second moments when someone brings you a problem.

Here's what happens when your team raises concerns:

What breaks trust:
❌ Dismissing their reality
→ "Everyone's busy right now"
→ Translation: Your wellbeing doesn't matter

❌ Making it about you
→ "I worked 80 hours last week too"
→ Translation: Your struggle isn't valid

❌ Using guilt as motivation
→ "We need team players here"
→ Translation: Speaking up makes you disloyal

Instead of defaulting to defensiveness, here’s how we guide leaders to respond—using the CHANGES framework from Conversational Intelligence®:

🤝 C - Co-Creating
(Shift from Excluding to Including)
→ "Thank you for trusting me with this - let's solve it together"
→ Makes them part of the solution, not the problem

🤝 H - Humanizing
(Shift from Judging to Appreciating)
→ "Your honesty takes courage and helps our whole team"
→ Demonstrate respect for their contribution

🤝 A - Aspiring
(Shift from Limiting to Expanding Aspirations)
→ "This feedback helps us create the culture we want"
→ Connect their concern to bigger organizational goals

🤝 N - Navigating
(Shift from Withholding to Sharing)
→ "Let me share what I'm seeing and hear your perspective"
→ Create transparency around challenges and solutions

🤝 G - Generativity
(Shift from Knowing to Discovering)
→ "What ideas do you have that we haven't tried yet?"
→ Reward their insights and encourage innovation

🤝 E - Expressing
(Shift from Dictating to Developing)
→ "How can we empower you to make decisions about your workload?"
→ Inspire them to own solutions

🤝 S - Synchronizing
(Shift from Criticizing to Celebrating)
→ "Here's what we're changing because you spoke up"
→ Celebrate their courage and close the feedback loop

The hidden cost of getting this wrong:
– Your best people stop bringing you problems
– Issues explode instead of getting solved early
– Innovation dies because psychological safety doesn't exist

The payoff of getting this right:
– Teams that come to you first when things go wrong, not last.
– Projects move faster because the sticky points come up early.
– Conflict fades as respect and tolerance goes up.

Your next conversation is your next opportunity to choose trust over control.
Start with one letter that comes most easily and work your way through CHANGES… one each day.