Do You Trust Your Employees? Do Your Employees Trust You?

Trust is a requisite of any relationship, whether it personal, professional, or a combination of both. If a relationship lacks trust, it will never move beyond a basic transactional level where neither party can be ‘burned’ by the other. It really is incredibly limiting. A lack of trust not only stops a relationship from moving beyond the transactional, it stops even transactional relationships from growing. Because not only does the probability of getting burned need to be minimized, the potential consequences of getting burned also have to be considered. And that means even profitable transactions are typically halted as well, as neither party wants to take the risk.

A long time ago, a mentor of mine told me that the best way to figure out whether or not you can trust someone is to trust them. And it makes sense. There is no litmus test for determining trustworthiness based on other factors. You can hedge your bets by watching a person interact with others. You can ask around. But sometimes neither of those is possible to any extent. And if you are this person’s leader there will undoubtedly come a time when you need to decide between trusting them to deliver on something or doing that thing yourself.

This is the line of demarcation where the relationship progresses or stalls. This is the point where your actions will tell your employee “I trust you” or “I don’t trust you.”

And it sounds harsh. Maybe you’re reading this and thinking “Oh that’s ridiculous, it’s not that I don't trust them, it’s just that I don’t trust them…yet.” Yeah, those are the same thing. Because it doesn’t matter what’s in your mind or what your motivations are, the employee will interpret the action as though you don’t trust them.

But here’s the hardest part: The longer you wait to let them take the reins, the more likely it is that the assignment will be more consequential and have less room for error. So not only does it behoove you as the leader to start out the relationship on the right foot when it comes to trust, the consequences of failure are typically much smaller during the first few weeks of a reporting relationship than they are several months in.

Everyone’s been asked, sometime in their life, the hypothetical question of “if two people were drowning and you could only save one who would it be?” And the information given to you about each person helps make that decision. Because, while no one wants to let anyone drown, the nature of the question is that you have to pick one person. If the options are “a close friend” and “a total stranger” the obvious answer is that we would save the close friend.

What does this have to do with trust in professional relationships? Well, I believe that when an employee or a peer breaks your trust, it’s rarely (if ever) malicious. Very few people are trying to hurt you or betray you. In most cases, it was simply a matter of priorities. The person had a decision to make and they chose to prioritize something else over your trust in them. Much like how you don’t want to watch anyone drown but, if you had to choose you would pick the close friend over the total stranger.

And this is where things come full circle. When you start out a relationship by trusting people, most will earn that trust retroactively. The ones who don’t teach us lessons and help us make better decisions going forward. But the best relationships…the ones where you can be virtually certain of a person’s trustworthiness…are the ones where you are the close friend this person doesn’t want to drown. You become the priority because you created a relationship based on mutual trust right from the beginning.

I’ve been in leadership roles where employees would rather sacrifice themselves than risk losing my trust in them. And I’ve had leaders whose trust I’d never risk losing no matter the sacrifice that was needed. If you’re a leader of people, every day, every interaction, every task or assignment is another opportunity to tell one of your employees “I trust you.”

And you’ll be incredibly surprised how people rise to the occasion.

To hear more in-depth discussions on leadership, check out the top-rated Business Management podcast Hacking Your Leadership.