What Happens to Business When Leaders Don't Trust
How you lead is inseparable from how you are wired.
Your wires are your past, personality, present—the full context of your present life and the moment you are in—and your future aspirations. Think of yourself, then, as a stranded wire.
Within these wires lies your ability and willingness to trust.
Without trust, businesses crumble.
When employees don’t trust their leaders:
Communication breaks down
Engagement plummets
Collaboration weakens
Innovation stalls
Productivity drops
Politics and infighting increase
Client relationships suffer
Toxicity spreads
Turnover increases
Change resistance grows
Talent costs skyrocket
Financial performance declines
But when leaders don’t trust their employees…that’s even worse. It’s worse because the effects are worse. The effects are worse because leaders hold the structural power. When leaders don’t trust their employees, employees either burn out trying to prove themselves, quietly exit, or stay but with resentment and disengagement. This impacts their behavior, so not only do they lose trust in the leader, but their disengagement drives the leader to lose more trust in them. It becomes a negative spiral.
Trust is bi-directional, meaning giving begets receiving. The tricky thing is that between leader and employee, it is based on an asymmetrical relationship. That means the leader has the greater influence. That also means, when it comes to trust, leaders must give and repair first. Dina Denham Smith wrote a great article in 2023 for Harvard Business Review (HBR) on the steps leaders can take to begin trusting their employees.
To me, the most important step and the one that is often glossed over is sitting with what you are afraid of. Some think everything ties to trust. I think that before you can trust, you must know what you are most afraid of and how you respond to uncertainty, and why. Then you wrestle with those answers so the fear and uncertainty lose power. And that brings us back to you as a stranded wire.
Understanding how you are wired is called self-awareness. Organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich found that 95% of people think they are self-aware. Only 10-15% actually are. You have to develop the skill of self-awareness and learn to apply that self-awareness to your leadership in real time. You cannot do that without masterful coaching and reflection. People also think they learn from experience. Most are not reflecting on their experiences, however. You cannot fully learn from experience if you do not fully reflect on how you showed up in your experiences.
Start with this. Think of an employee you are struggling to trust. Why? Do you doubt their competence? Do you doubt their commitment to their work during working hours? Do you doubt their integrity? Do you doubt their authenticity and character? Do you doubt their reliability?
I find that when we really trace it back, the fear is a fear of failure or looking a fool. Perhaps you’re afraid that if you trust this (or all) of your employees and stop micromanaging, they won’t get it done, and the business will collapse, leaving you with layers of failure, including financial.
Perhaps you are afraid that if you trust this (or all) of your employees and stop micromanaging, they will take advantage of you, leaving you feeling foolish for having misplaced your trust.
If either or both resonate, ask yourself why. Really explore this and where it comes from. This is where a credentialed coach or consulting psychology professional (or both 🙋♀️) can help. Again, leaders have to go first. If you want quick insight into how you are wired and how that wiring is creating a low-trust organization, schedule a 15-minute discovery call here.