When Trust Doesn't Trickle Down
Business Relationship Management Institute (BRM Institute)
Connect Relationships to Results
Cheerleaders.
You either love 'em or hate ’em.
Me, I love them.
I was never a cheerleader. I wasn’t even in the vicinity of being a part of that club, teeming with popular girls. However, being the little sister of a high school all-star athlete in basketball, football, and baseball, I paid my dues and spent ample time in the stands watching the cream of the crop do their thing. I was always enthralled with the cheerleading routines and held my breath every time they threw one of the girls in the air. Fortunately, I never witnessed a failed attempt at a toss-and-catch move.
Cheerleaders are resilient. They are athletes, and they must build immense trust with each other. If you are the flyer (the one being tossed into the air), you have to put a lot of trust into your base (the ones who catch you).
If the base cheerleaders who catch the flyer failed over and over again, the trust would erode between the coach and the teammates. Nobody wants to see that happen. As a matter of fact, virtually no one wants to see any of the cheerleaders get hurt. Spectators want to be entertained by their creativity and gravity-defying moves.
So, what does cheerleading have to do with organizations?
Cheerleading teams are just like organizations. Both have a leader, and both have people the leader needs to look out for. Likewise, both have a purpose and goal. Case in point, the cheerleading coach has a lot of responsibility. They have to pick the best people for each position, get their team in shape, enforce rules, and lead practices so that when the time comes, they can establish value in what the team is performing. In organizations, leaders have to hire the best-qualified people for the job, get their teams established, implement rules, and be the representative of the organization’s purpose. Both coach and CEO must work at building trust between the teammates and leadership.
Trust plays an integral part in establishing a good routine. When trust is established between people, it builds meaningful partnerships, gives vulnerability a place to exist, and improves the culture of the team. Therefore, we can deduce that trust is a delicate balance between the coach and the cheerleaders and the organization’s leaders and their employees.
So, what happens if the coach doesn’t trust the cheerleaders or the organization’s leader doesn’t trust their employees?
When trust becomes an ominous mist of doubt, the routine falls apart. When a leader of an organization doesn’t trust their employees, it creates an uncertainty laced with doubt, fear, and resentment. Eventually, the actions and reactions of the employees become jagged, and they stop contributing to the organization’s purpose. They become disenfranchised and lose the passion to evoke change in the workplace. Suddenly, work becomes nothing more than a means to an end. Eventually, this leads to the all-too-familiar employees punching a clock and working for a paycheck scenario. Keep your head down and just do your job.
The same happens when the cheerleaders don’t trust their coach. They don’t feel safe, they question everything the coach asks them to do, and they lose the drive to be the best they can be. They become disenfranchised by the coach’s inability to let go and allow the athletes to do what they do best.
When trust is eroded between people and their leaders, it contributes to a broken culture. People stop investing their time, talent, and creativity when there is a lack of trust between leadership and the team.
In any leadership role, one of the biggest signs of distrust is micromanagement. When the boss micromanages every project or assignment, it sends a message that they don’t trust that the employee is competent enough to do their job. When leaders put their people under a microscope, fail to give latitude for creativity, and create an environment riddled with second thoughts or fear of retaliation, it breeds debilitating stress in people. Stress leads to low productivity, missing work, and eventually the loss of a once-viable employee. The mistrust wasn’t established overnight, so in turn, establishing trust won’t occur straightaway. It takes time and conscious change from the leadership. Most people want to work for an organization that respects them, makes them feel safe, and has a healthy evolving culture.
So, what can generate change in leadership to nurture trust?
True leaders of change embrace self-reflection. They lead with a?growth mindset, and they choose empathy over apathy. When a person in a position of authority makes the conscious choice to evaluate their behavior and decides to change the way they act and react to situations, it gives them the power to change the trajectory of their organization.
Nobody said it would be easy. It’s work, and it is uncomfortable for some leaders to step outside of themselves and see where they can do better. However, when leaders choose to self-reflect and implement real change in their behavior, trust begins to grow between leaders and employees. When a leader can switch from a self-important thought process to a selfless way of thinking, they create an elevated consciousness in their organization, and employees will follow their lead.
The same goes for when leaders embrace a growth mindset and use it within their organization. Employees will take notice and start to adopt it. There is no trust that trickles down in a finite mindset. Developing trusting relationships is crucial to the organization’s ability to thrive. Building an organization that embodies a growth mindset is and will always be a team effort; however, the concrete factor is leadership adopting and implementing a growth mindset. Organizations need leaders who can see beyond their own personal gains or egos. It takes a shift in the way leaders view and interact with their employees and vice versa.
It doesn’t take much to have compassion and show empathy to each other. Just as a cheer coach will show empathy to a struggling athlete, leaders of organizations who show empathy to their employees will have a much more productive, collaborative, and creative work environment. It is a life skill that good leaders bring to their organization. People want leaders who are empathetic and compassionate. It doesn’t take much time or energy to look beyond the numbers on a page or comments on a review to show empathy to employees who are struggling.
What would happen to the morale of an organization if leaders started engaging their employees on a more person-to-person level? What if instead of pulling an employee in and reprimanding them for a drop in productivity, a leader pulled them into their office to actually ask how they are doing? If leaders flipped the script and decided to connect to employees who are struggling and take a real interest in their ability to thrive, it would reinvent all relationships throughout the organization. Suddenly, employees who cringed at performance reports would be willing to share their struggles. Empathy builds trust, and trust is an important ingredient that keeps the organization on the path of infinite possibilities.
Leaders have a choice. They hold the power within their hands to draw upon their own skills and level up. They can do business the old way, demoralizing and building suspicions within their organization, or they can choose to evolve their mindset and embrace a new way of building trust, evolving culture, and empowering their employees.