Once people decide they don’t like or trust you - it’s very difficult to convince them otherwise.

Everything you say and do from that point forward will be filtered through that lense.

This makes advocating for yourself and personally changing the tide of sentiment difficult (if not impossible).

In a business environment, it takes a strong and articulate leader/manager to push back on false narratives and elevate truth and justice.

But that’s hard and rare to do because the manager risks their own alienation.

The solution?

For leaders:

1. Work intentionally to create a culture of truth-seeking that minimizes personality/emotion-based decision making. Conversely be vigilant about signs of fragility and easy intimidation (ideal case).

2. Encourage direct communication between stakeholders rather than games of telephone.

3. Defend unjustly criticized employees (This reenforces point 1).

For individuals:

1. Ensure careful and diplomatic day-to-day execution so as to avoid crossing the point of no return. (However be careful: too much of this runs the risk of undermining a truthseeking culture of honest communication and rapid improvement).

2. Hyper-vigilance to share your perspective and contributions as you go using a range of communication techniques (clear roadmaps, group status updates, metrics, etc) (taxing but often necessary).

3. Building political alliances that will support you (yuck).

4. Grit and perseverance (but don’t spend too long banging your head against a wall - sometimes it’s better to move on).

In short, it takes hard, intentional work from good faith actors on all sides.