When We Fail to Trust

Establishing trust should be our primary focus when working with either individuals or groups.

There are many ways trust is established successfully but without it you’ll fail to help someone connect with what you want to share. I remember a time when I realised that I’d missed out this valuable point and kicked myself for not noticing sooner.

Distracted, Rebelling or Bored? Or Don’t They Trust You?

I was delivering a session and we’d been lucky enough to be using the drama and dance space for the sessions. Since chairs hadn’t been provided, I’d asked the group to use the available mats. This was at the fifth session and so the group was pretty well established. But as they sat on these mats and I worked through the material for that session, it was apparent that they weren’t settled and had begun to distract each other and play with the mats or their journals.

Standing in front of them attempting to engage them was proving more and more challenging. I felt my frustration increase as I saw the session not go as I’d hoped. As they played around and I tried to focus on the material, another part of me whispered, “You’re only as good as the feedback you get”. Since the group was playing around, clearly I’d lost rapport, lost trust, with them. I wasn’t communicating, I had to change something that I was doing.

If You’re Not Getting The Response You Want…What’s Happening with Trust

Quickly I realised that I was standing in front and above the group: I wasn’t meeting them at their level. I grabbed a mat and sat with the group, asking them to form a circle together.

These two actions: sitting with them and forming a circle changed how we interacted. It reset the group dynamic and I took the programme material and reworked it to achieve the session outcome.

…Do Something Different

What may be useful to think about is that if you’re not getting the response from your child you wanted, perhaps rather than asking the child to ‘pay attention’ or ‘listen’, I’d invite you to change something you’re doing and find alternatives.

What did I learn? I enjoyed learning not to lose myself to the outcome and nurturing a responsive behaviour from the children is uppermost. I’d lost sight that I needed to maintain trust before expecting the pupils to engage. It’s a lesson learned and, as ever, it’s always nice to be taught by children.