In Steven Spielberg’s 1975 blockbuster “Jaws,” Police Chief Martin Brody fails to convince Mayor Larry Vaughn to close Amity’s beaches despite evidence of a deadly shark attack. It’s a communication breakdown that leads to multiple deaths and makes Universal Pictures a fortune. But despite being great storytelling and even better business, the dynamic between Brody and Vaughn offers powerful insights into what can go wrong in the workplace today.
With global employee engagement falling to 21% in 2024, and managers recording the largest drop, leaders might be surprised to know that the answer to reversing this trend lies in avoiding the Brody/Vaughn trap.
Connection before correction
Chief Brody’s fundamental mistake was failing to connect with Mayor Vaughn’s dream of a successful Fourth of July weekend before he attempted to correct the problem of the rogue shark. The successful opening weekend of summer was Larry Vaughn’s reality, his story world. And as storytelling expert Will Storr explains, all of us live in our story world where our priorities take precedence.
If Brody had connected with Vaughn’s priority of economic success before correcting it with his focus on public safety, then the outcome for the citizens of Amity might have been very different. It would also have turned Jaws into a fifteen-minute short … but that is another story. This “connection before correction” principle has a direct application to workplace engagement. If leaders want to drive engagement on strategic initiatives or changes, they must start by demonstrating that they understand the realities of their employees.
In our work with Aviva, the British multinational insurance company, we developed The DNA of Engagement as a way for the leaders in that organisation to build trust and influence change based on a strong foundation of understanding.
The trust equation: Why Brody failed
In their 2000 best seller “The Trusted Advisor, “ David Maister, Charles Green and Robert Galford developed The Trust Equation. A quick look at how this valuable tool works explains why Brody’s approach fell on deaf ears.
Maister, Green and Galford say that trust equals credibility plus reliability plus intimacy, divided by self-orientation Brody was doing fine with the first two elements. He was a credible and reliable police officer. But by rushing in with his plan to close the beach, he failed when it came to intimacy, which is the quality of making people feel heard, understood and psychologically safe. And the divisor number of self-orientation went through the roof because Vaughn perceived that Brody was simply throwing his weight around rather than serving the financial needs of Amity. Now, Brody might have been doing the logically correct thing, but the low intimacy and high self-orientation scores that Vaughn instinctively gave him meant that trust fell into a gap from which it struggled to escape.
Recent research suggests that a similar trust gap is threatening employee engagement and impacting growth in the workplace today.
A 2024 PwC survey on Trust in Business found that 86% of executives said they highly trusted their employees, but only 60% of employees felt highly trusted. Moreover, 61% of those employees reported that this perceived lack of trust impacted their ability to do their jobs well. If leaders want to bridge this gap, then they have their work cut out.
Co-creating stories: the API of humanity
In the world of programming, an application programming interface (API) is a set of rules and tools that allow different software applications to communicate with each other. Stories that are co-created in collaborative conversation act as the API of humanity. They help different people with different perspectives build mutual understanding and work together toward a common end. Leaders can create the conditions for these stories to emerge if they start to build trust through understanding.
For Brody, this might have meant saying, “I understand Amity needs a successful Fourth of July weekend, and if we get that right, then it will be fundamental to our economic survival.” This would have earned him the permission to bridge into the problem with, “Which is precisely why I’m concerned about this shark and the economic damage it could cause for years to come.” Then he and Vaughn could have started to co-create the story of defeating the shark based on understanding and a common interest. Connection before correction could have transformed confrontation into collaboration.
Dream, nightmare, action: A framework for engagement
The DNA framework — Dream, Nightmare, Action — offers a conversational structure for leaders to build trust and engage employees in change initiatives. It starts by connecting to the other person’s goals and aspirations. Then it highlights the challenges that threaten those goals before proposing collaborative solutions. It could have worked for Brody. And it could work for you.
This approach mirrors the ideas in previous articles in SmartBrief, where successful change has been shown to be more likely when managers empathize with the employees.
How leaders can do this
Thankfully, making this happen isn’t rocket science. But it does need intentional and conscious effort.
- Start by telling your own stories of your hopes for the future to create a psychologically safe space where others can tell their stories and build trust.
- Ask open questions to tease out the details of your team’s fears.
- Demonstrate that you have changed by what you hear when a good suggestion comes up. It’s as simple as saying, “Oh, that’s good. I’ve not thought of it in that way before.”
Practical applications for today’s workplace
Here’s how organizations can apply these lessons:
- Redesign the feedback process.
Make “Connection before Correction” part of your engagement playbook. Make sure that managers inquire about an employee’s intentions and challenges before offering any critique.
- Start the work early.
Before you announce changes, create listening sessions to understand what employees value about current practices and their fears about the future.
- Make collaboration queen.
Before you start problem-solving, give the team the time and space to share stories about their priorities and constraints. And really double down on this in a cross-functional world.
The billion-dollar lesson
The irony of Jaws is that Brody’s communication failure created a cinematic monster that has netted over $800 million on a $9 million budget. But in your organization, the cost of failing to build trust through mutual understanding will be measured in disengagement, resistance and employee turnover.
By mastering the art of connection before correction, leaders can create the conditions where a co-created narrative emerges to drive meaningful change. And in today’s complex workplace, that’s a lesson worth learning — even from a 50-year-old shark.
Opinions expressed by SmartBrief contributors are their own.
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