Are You Creating Distrust in the Workplace?

Do your employees trust you? Trust is an integral part of human relations inside and outside of the workplace. When employees trust their managers, their companies and their colleagues they are much more likely to be engaged and be more passionate about their work.

Trust is the building block of human relationships. When something happens to break that trust, rebuilding it can take a long time. Keeping the communication open, honest and creating a work environment where employees feel they can trust their managers and companies is vital to success.

To help you maintain trust amongst you employees, here are 6 actions that actively breed distrust to avoid. Take a look at this list and eliminate these practices from your place of business.

One - Forgetting that anything you can and will be used against you.

When you are in a leadership position, employees look to you for guidance. Your attitude, what you say and how you act dictates how they feel about their future job security and morale at work. A small, insignificant comment you thought might have meant nothing could lead to devastating a junior employee.

You are never “off the record.” Everything you say or don’t say, everything you do or don’t do influences trust. So be aware at all times of what you say, your actions and these are both perceived by your employees because they won’t forget.

Two - Ignoring people’s problems.

Companies and management all too often become aware of problems employees may be having. These problems can range from personal to simple frustration with a situation at work. When employees know that leaders are aware of a problem and nothing is actively done to address or help solve it distrust ensues.

Be active in handling problems. Don’t ignore them. 

Three - Responding in a reactive mode. Losing your temper.

Employees will fail. They will break your trust and mistakes get made. No matter how hard you work to hire the right people and no matter how carefully they are on-boarded, mistakes and upsets will occur.

Don’t lose your temper and react emotionally. You don’t have to be zen like about everything, but keep a level head. Blows ups, emotional reactions and leaders exhibiting irrationality leads to employees distrusting you. So when tough situations happen, try to keep your cool despite everything invitation not to. 

Four - Ignoring your blind spots and faults.

There is no shame in admitting you have blind spots, faults and points to work on. No one is perfect. The mistake is to ignore them and not work on self-improvement. If you have the slightest bit of attention on a productivity weakness or things to work on in your leadership, you can bet there are at least a few employees who notice these things too.

You can’t be perfect, so don’t fixate on all your faults. But, make conscious efforts to improve. Employees will distrust a manager who has a weak spot that is simply ignored. Why should they improve if the manager or leader isn’t improving either?

Five - Thinking you don’t need your employees to trust you.

A lot of managers make the fatal mistake of not thinking it matters if their employees trust them. The mindset of “Who cares what they think? They work for me” can be catastrophic.

Just because an employee is lower on the corporate totem pole doesn’t mean you don’t need their trust and possibly even their help at some point in the future. And no one who doesn’t trust you will help you. Building trust, actively expanding your network creates a sort of safety net in the event of a crisis. Also, work just tends to go better and employees show more respect when they trust you.

Six - Ignoring your own words.

Being the boss grants a little leeway. There are certain privileges that managers have that junior employees don’t such as higher pay, status, etc. But these privileges also come with increased responsibility and part of that is making sure when you give your word, when you say something is going to happen...make it happen.

Giving your word and following through is the basic building block of trust. Just because your employees don’t have a position within the company to hold you accountable doesn’t mean you can break your word to them.

These are common ways to create distrust in the workplace. You can use them as a guideline on what not to do and focus on repairing trouble spots. 

The keynote is to actively work on building and creating trust amongst your employees. The more trust you build, the more authority and respect you will command which should result in more production.

Mentor Resources can help any company to leverage technology to create tailored career development programs that are cost-effective. Our mentoring software - Wisdom Share is a cloud-based program that is simple and comes with guided workflows. Included are tools for administrators to attract, enroll, connect, and guide participants. We also provide analytics to ensure you can monitor your employee development program and easily see ROI metrics. 

Reach out to us today for a Free Demonstration of our software.