Rebuilding trust starts with acknowledgment.
The first thing to collapse in any negotiation isn’t the terms. It’s the trust. You can see it in Washington, D.C., right now. Every shutdown is more about belief than policy. People stop trusting that the other side means what they say. Then they stop listening. Eventually, they stop showing up.
I’ve seen this movie many times before, and not just on Capitol Hill. Years ago, I sat across from a vice chairman at KPMG during a tech acquisition that was about to die on the table. Both sides had retreated into their corners, convinced the other was posturing. Numbers were flying, but no one was listening.
So, I did something that, at the time, felt counterintuitive. I stopped negotiating. From every frustration and every unspoken risk, I summarized the other side’s position. I told the client that it seemed like he was afraid of wasting political capital on a deal that might not deliver. When he finally said, “That’s right,” I knew the deal had shifted. The trust valve had reopened.
That’s the same missing link in Washington. You can’t pass a budget in a room that’s stopped believing.
As a talent agent, media attorney, and professor at USC Gould School of Law, I teach my students and clients how to build trust in their negotiations. I’m also working on my new book, TILT the Room, coming out in 2026, which explains how you can use timing, influence, leverage, and trust to better negotiate.
Trust is the currency before currency.
Every deal starts with an invisible exchange, credibility for consideration. If you don’t believe someone is operating in good faith, you’ll assume every offer hides a trap. When trust disappears, facts get filtered through fear.
That’s what is playing out now during the current shutdown: a failure of emotional credit. Both parties are catering to their base instead of seeking the truth, and the country is paying the interest on that debt.
In business, this happens all the time. Founders promise equity they can’t deliver. Partners start hiding numbers. Teams sense the spin and quietly disengage. The shutdown just happens faster in politics because it’s televised.
You can’t build trust in a transaction you’ve already poisoned.
When I was a kid, I learned that hard lesson of trust on the street, not in law school. Deals in backrooms and alleyways weren’t written. They were felt. You learned to read the room, the pause, and the micro hesitation before someone said yes. If that energy shifted, the deal was over before words caught up.
That instinct never left me. It’s why I tell executives: if you can’t feel trust leaking out of the room, you’re not negotiating. You’re performing, and they are not feeling it.
Acknowledge the issue to rebuild trust.
Whether it’s a government shutdown or a stalemate in negotiations, rebuilding trust in crisis doesn’t start with persuasion. It starts with acknowledgment. Say things like:
- “It seems like you’re giving up on the idea of us working this out.”
- “It seems like you don’t believe we’ll follow through.”
- “It sounds like you think we’re protecting our side, not the solution.”
This is the language of reconnection, the first step to tilting the room back toward progress.
The TILT lesson: Retilt before you renegotiate.
In the TILT framework, trust is always the first pillar for a reason. It’s the oxygen of every deal. You can’t strategize your way out of an emotional deficit. Right now, leaders across the country, in politics, in startups, and in families are facing their own mini shutdowns. Someone stopped believing. The only way back is empathy that feels real, not rehearsed.
So, before you send that next proposal, schedule that next call. Walk back into the room you just lost, and ask yourself one question: “Do they still believe me?” Because once they stop, all the leverage in the world won’t move them.