Apr 20 07
CommTips #7: Establishing trust as a manager
By Maureen Taylor
Trust is paramount in anything you do. On the flip side, a lack of trust in a work environment is especially problematic for both employees and management.
- What will happen when people don’t trust the information they receive?
- Motivation without trust is difficult - so how do you get your team to trust you?
One big problem is that distrust self perpetuates – when employees distrust management, management becomes less trusting of employees.
Then, as new people join the organization, they hear from others that certain people cannot be trusted. Consequently, it’s difficult to eliminate and to reestablish yourself as a credible, reliable, and honest leader.
Proactively establishing trust is the way to avoid the problem. Establishing that trust does take conscious strategy, like everything else in business. Here are some of the steps that you can take:
- Share Information – don’t communicate only on a “need to know” basis. You don’t want people to feel that the information they’re receiving has been ‘filtered.’
- Be Honest at All Times – if people feel as if they’ve been lied to even once they may not trust you in the future.
- Conduct Face to Face Communication – check in with people and be sure to know what’s going on. People are more likely to trust managers who are involved.
- Avoid Inappropriate Office Conversations – be personal and friendly with your colleagues, but don’t let your relationships become too casual or overly dependent. Save the work criticism and gossip for an outsider’s ears.
- Listen to Employees – people will trust you more when they feel that their views are heard and considered. Act on people’s suggestions and let them know that you’ll do so. For instance, “As so and so suggested, we’re now going to …”
And the number one way to start building trust with your employees: You trust them. Let down your guard and eventually they will reciprocate. Leading by example in this area creates the right culture, where trust develops organically and naturally.
This seems like a workable idea for a small company where most of the employees and managers know each other or in a new company without any communications history. I don’t see this approach working well at an establshed or larger company unless the trust between employees and managers already exisits.
I think accountability is also an important factor in building trust—and it goes both ways. Management should be held accountable to employees as much as employees are held accountable to management. I’ve seen many people lose trust in management because the leaders failed to own-up to their mistakes. This can have a huge impact. As an employee, it’s hard to believe in a leader when you feel like they’ve let you down. Trust is hard thing to earn after it’s lost.
As the leader, taking the first step and admitting that you were wrong is probably the most difficult part. Honesty goes a long way. I’d say it’s the building block of trust. So leaders can take the cowardly route of denial like Clinton did, or admit their mistakes like Newsom. Just remember that how you take that first step reflects on your character and credibility.
I’d like to expand on Maureen Taylor’s last point because I believe it’s so essential.
After over three dozen years in the institutional investment managent industry I have seen many managers and aspiring managers earn and loose trust. Let’s take it as a given that a trustworthy manager, at base, must be respected for his or her professional competence and all that it entails.
From my experience, beyond competence, the managers who were the most successful in earning and keeping trust had an intrinsic trait - genuine self confidence.
I emphasize “genuine” because acting self confident is not the same as being self confident. Even the individual may not be aware of the difference having developed the external characteristics some might associate with confidence (i.e., hubris, assertiveness/ aggressiveness, mannerisms, etc.) But if you work for this individual for any period of time, you’ll see through it (and if you don’t, you probably shouldn’t be in management yourself because the basic competence referred to above includes being a good judge of people.)
A manager who is trustworthy freely evidences trust in others. The self confidence comes in because trust involves being able to defer to the judgement of subordinates even though their solution may be somewhat at variance with your own. It’s learned in Organizational Behavior 101 — get people to take ownership of a solution and then see how much more effectively they’ll run with it. Furthermore, trust them in this way and see what happens to their faith and trust in you. The added benefit beyond trust is that they will develop to their own potential more quickly.