As in any personal relationship, lack of trust and confidence in a leader and in an organization leads to a lack of commitment from employees, underperforming staff and failed objectives.
There are two issues to deal with concerning trust and confidence:
1. Trust in the organization
Trust in the organizations objectives is crucial; as a manager you need to define and plan objectives from the outset. The worst outcome of poor managerial planning is jeopardizing the organization itself, which has clear and dire consequences for all employees.
The moment doubt exists in an organization, the situation can quickly deteriorate. Make sure you believe in the objectives and you follow them through.
Trust in the organization at large means building trust in team leadership and vision. Managers and leaders need to be seen to be committed. Employees will accept and work through difficult times when they arrive because they feel the correct decisions have been made and the right people are at the helm to weather the storm.
Creating trust and confidence in the organization’s objectives necessitates covering all the bases. This means that any new venture must be assessed not just for its merits, but crucially also for its possible pitfalls. Only if these are known can people be confident that the management team has planned for every eventuality.
If there are unknowns in the equation, copious research should be carried out to find as much information as possible, and the worst-case scenario that could result. Ultimately, there are no foregone conclusions in business, and, by its very nature, trust is not based on cast-iron assurances, rather on the probability that everything will progress in the most pleasing manner.
It is at this point that management must commit itself, reveal its intentions, and ask for the trust of the employees.
2. Trust amongst individuals
This is the second area where trust and confidence must be built. Although this is the basis of trust in the organization as a whole, in this respect we are dealing with the day-to-day interactions of the management with its team members.
This is a crucial issue. Managers must be trusted for their management functions to be realized most effectively and for their team to gel and become a commercial force to be reckoned with.
The issue of trust in others is an easy one to define. Trusting someone we work with is about having faith in them; believing that they are as good as their word. For managers, it is a matter of having faith in an employee to carry out a task without undue monitoring – knowing that they will not only complete the task when asked, but that they will complete it in line with the stated objectives.
It is also a matter of believing that people will behave acceptably in more general terms. A worker who is excellent at their job but who constantly undermines other members of the team must still be defined as untrustworthy.
Trust makes the working environment easier for everyone and creates the correct atmosphere for the best work to take place. However, if trust is so easily defined and so important, why is it that many managers report that they do not believe they have the trust of the people working under them?
The problem seems to be that trust can be based on outcomes, and when situations are not running smoothly, managers can lose the trust they have created. In reality, this suggests that trust was not evident in the first place because trust is something that should bridge the difficult times.
Trust that disappears when times are hard is extremely fickle and may suggest a larger problem within the organization where overall objectives are not perceived as credible, achievable, or worthwhile. In this case, managers are targeted because they are perceived as being the figurehead of the organization who is easiest to blame, simply because they are most visible.
Talking through issues of trust with employees is a vital part of managerial skills. An effective manager/leader must show they are fully aware that trust is important, and they must seek to identify exactly how trust between themselves and their team, and within their team, can be quantified. This is the only way any problems or shortfalls can be identified.
Employees who trust their managers are more likely to tell them what they need to hear, not what they believe they want to hear. Receiving false information from team members, or receiving the truth too late, could seriously jeopardize the goals of the organization.
A trusting atmosphere also makes for a happy atmosphere. Tensions are reduced when people feel they can trust each other. The overall objectives of a team are achieved by the individual successes of each member, and success is therefore a cumulative and collaborative affair.
One person who cannot be trusted to perform at their best can produce a poisoned workplace because those team members who are fully contributing will feel their efforts are being hampered. The less trusting a team of employees is, the harder their manager will have to work. This alone should be reason enough for any manager to strive to create trust and confidence: for an easier working life.
