Do Your People Trust You?

So, how important is trust in a leadership-followership relationship? Do you trust your boss? Do your people trust you?

Importance of trust

Organizations across America are dealing daily with keeping their talent. When you have a valuable workforce, the organizations can take leaps and bounds at meeting their mission. From political leaders to choosing a provider’s office, trust has become a popular word in our society.

In an article written about university professors in the state run universities in Turkey, the idea of trust for a supervisor and what the article labels as workplace deviance provides an interesting take on trust (2014, Authentic leaders must…). When discussing authentic leadership, the assumption from the written article is that when there is authentic and trusted leadership, the followers are better engaged employees, mission accomplishment is higher, job satisfaction increases, and efficiency and effectiveness of work output is higher s highlights (2014, Authentic leaders must…).

Impact of trust

The opposite is presented when there is lack of trust for a leader. In Erkutlu and Chafra (2013), the employees’ perception of their bosses influences their work ethic and if not trusted, can lead to poor work related issues such as missing work, sabotage of work, and workers leaving employment. When employees receive positive feedback and have a positive relationship with superiors, then those challenges can be mitigated due to employees working harder for their boss and organization.

In looking at other factors which affect the trust between leader and followers, organizational and bureaucratic factors have more opportunity to destroy hard built trust. Brown, Gray, McHardy and Taylor (2015) in their article show how changing benefits by the organization, most times out of the control of lower level leaders, can negatively influence the trust felt by employee. Altering work schedules, role responsibilities, technology changes, and staff changes may impact the trust employees have towards their leader and organization.

What to do?

1. First and foremost, your character with your employees has to have at the foundation of honesty. You’re clearly on stronger ground when your staff knows you provide honest, clear, sensible, and compassionate answers to workplace issues.
2. Clear communication will provide an open dialogue and allow you the opportunity to hear the issues affecting the staff. Trying to muddy the discussion or not share bad news as bad news never works. There is only so much whipped cream you can put on a crap pie, but it doesn’t change the fact it is a crap pie. You will have better success with staff when you face the problem together with everyone understanding the problem on equal footing.
3. Building relationships with the staff during the good times helps in the bad. Staffs want to trust their boss. Don’t give them a reason not to trust you. Provide honest assessments of upcoming challenges facing the unit, provide opportunities for staff to work on solving the challenges, and be there to take their concerns seriously and honestly provide you as the leader with a positive relationship with your employees.

(2014) Authentic leaders must “walk the talk”, Strategic Direction 30(8), 6-8. Doi:org/10.1108/SD-07-2014-0087
Brown, S., Gray, D., McHardy, J., & Taylor, K. (2015) Employee trust and workplace performance. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 116, 361-378
Erkutlu, H. & Chafra, J., (2013). Effects of trust and psychological contract violation on authentic leadership and organizational deviance, Management Research Review, 36(9), 828-848