This monthly 60–90-minute virtual Strengthening Relationships presentation series was created to have speakers share their professional expertise with the UT Austin community on ways to strengthen relationships and build community. This year, the presentations will run from November 2025 - June 2026.
We are thinking broadly in terms of topics that could help faculty, staff and retirees cultivate meaningful, healthy, and authentic connection with others by strengthening their relationship skills with their partners, their co-workers, the teams they lead, their families, and the children they parent.
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The Musts of Trust: How to Build, Maintain, and Repair Your Relationships at Work
Wednesday, November 12, 2025 – 12pm to 1:30pm
Dr. Sarah Porter
Sarah Porter, PhD, a licensed psychologist and founder of a workplace training and consulting practice, will be November’s speaker. Join us for her The Musts of Trust presentation, which will explore ways to establish and sustain trust within your team. You will (a) discover how six key trustworthiness indicators affect your work relationships, and (b) identify steps you can take right away to strengthen trust with your coworkers.
Course Description:
What is the backbone of every successful team? Trust. In its absence, we often become stingy with our time, resources, ideas, and goodwill toward colleagues. But when trust takes hold, engagement and performance soar.
This training offers a practical roadmap for nurturing trust at work, no matter your role or function. Explore which daily actions facilitate trust within new or existing teams, preserve it in varied work environments, and recover it when trust gets shaken.
Participants will be taught how to:
● Describe the “teeter totter of trust”
● Summarize the benefits of prioritizing trust within your team and organization
● Identify and evaluate six trustworthiness indicators that shape your work relationships
● Employ targeted strategies to grow trust, recover from lapses, and strengthen team
collaboration