This can be an extremely emotionally charged topic. Because of this, I have debated writing on this topic for a while. Or at least, how to present it. My intention with this is to educate you on why there’s often so much distrust at work, to provide you with a more zoomed-out perspective on trust, and to help you think about the crucial role trust plays in a high-performing team. I’m not going to provide trust-building tactics in this post – that is enough content for a whole other post.
These are signs that you lean towards distrusting others. It’s good to recognize this because the first step is awareness.
Do you want to work in an environment that you don’t trust? Do you want to have employees that you don’t trust? Do you want to work for a boss you don’t trust? Why would you hire someone that you don’t feel you can trust? Have you inherited a team that you feel you can’t trust?
Without trust, you have nothing in the workplace. It may sound overstated, but, it’s the truth. Trust is absolutely crucial for collaboration and the open exchange of ideas. Trust provides a safe, secure, and reliable environment as well as feeling more closely connected with others, which is a critical element of employee engagement and overall human fulfillment. A trusting environment reduces the risk of anxiety and depression (and the opposite is true as well). If you’re an engaged employee, you are productive.
Trust issues come from: betrayal, parental conflicts, social rejection, negative life experiences, and our attachment style.
Many of us have experienced unhealthy, ineffective, dysfunctional situations in the past, as well as a fair amount of social conditioning. While hopefully we have learned from those situations, we can still hold onto the emotions and distrust and project it onto new situations with new people – often without even realizing we’re doing it. Sometimes, distrust for others is us projecting because we don’t trust ourselves. (Wow, that sounds powerful, doesn’t it?) Sometimes, trusting others means that we need to not take things personally.
I encourage you to discover where your roots of distrust come from and also to explore your attachment style. What are your triggers? What are your beliefs around trusting others? What would feel like to come from a place of trust? Be aware of the initial reaction that comes up for you and try to be skeptical of it and question it.
Distrust directly impacts a company’s bottom line. Your employees are less likely to speak up – both in a feedback way, and in a sharing ideas way. A lack of transparency, lack of clear policies & procedures, lack of clear promotion/growth paths, lack of clear performance review procedure, lack of clear compensation structure – will all cause distrust and gossip to thrive.
I worked in finance organizations where they specifically told us that sharing our compensation was not allowed (by the way, this is actually illegal! Unfortunately, that doesn’t prevent a fear of retaliation when you’re in the situation.)
Additionally, if your organization tolerates underperforming or toxic employees or leaders without holding them accountable (I see this a lotttttt – and the excuses are things like “they are revenue producing, they are a friend of a senior manager” yada yada) – this automatically sparks distrust because you are exhibiting different rules for different people.
Or for example, if one department can work remotely, for no given reason, but another department can’t, and you, as a leader, haven’t addressed this or enable it to happen, you are breeding distrust. Another way you can breed distrust is by saying one thing and doing something different – or similarly, people who are “smooth talkers” aka “bullshitters.” People will pick up on the fact that you aren’t true to your word and then they don’t feel they can trust you or what you are telling them. They might be trying to be accommodating or people pleasing and they might not even realize that what they’re saying doesn’t match their actions.
When there’s an environment of distrust, employees aren’t likely to stay (= higher turnover rate = costs the organization lots of money), and employees that are there aren’t performing their best because you aren’t enabling them to (= lower productivity and most likely low innovation = increased costs). Additionally, disengaged employees provide lower levels of customer service than engaged employees do; data shows that people would be willing to pay more for better customer service so you are missing out on profits.
Some argue that here in the U.S., employees can never fully trust their employer because of at-will employment, which means companies can fire anyone at any time without providing any legitimate reason or explanation (excluding discrimination). I don’t feel that we can have a fully trusting work environment while we at-will employment exists. At-will employment reinforces a pretty major power imbalance.
At-will employment is considered business as usual in the U.S., however it is not tolerated in most other industrialized countries. The majority of European countries, Japan, Mexico, Australia, and others prohibit unfair firings. These countries generally afford their employees with some protection against arbitrary and unfair discharge.
Getting rid of at-will employment would be a radical shift for U.S. organizations. In my mind, it would require senior leadership to take a more intentional, thoughtful approach to hiring the right people, to developing their leaders/employees, and would require holding them accountable along the way; the opposite of a laissez-faire approach. How uncomfortable does this feel for leaders who never received leadership training/coaching? Currently, these are areas where businesses don’t have much skin in the game. If they don’t feel like holding someone accountable or coaching/developing them, they can simply let the person go without any explanation. I would say this is the easy way out!
UPenn – Employment At Will in the United States: The Divine Right of Employers
All of the time, we tend to give trust to people who have not yet earned it and we simply don’t think about it. What about helping out a neighbor, stranger, or someone you don’t know all that well? I’m not talking about trusting them with your debit card PIN or anything confidential, but, trusting them with tools, equipment, etc. or trusting them to help you with something (changing a flat tire).
I suggest doing what you need to do to create a foundation of trust on your team and in your organization. Start from a place of assuming positive intent. If someone is repeatedly showing you that you can’t trust them, depending on the severity, have discussions with them – coach them and hold them accountable. After you’ve given it the appropriate amount of effort and with the correct procedure, weed these people out of your organization. Let them go work for the competition and focus on hiring the right people. Stay tuned for another post on ways you can build trust with others.
To offer one more perspective on trust, I want to bring up certain high stakes environments, like aviation. The safety of the crew and their passengers relies on people speaking up, requires them to work together cohesively (to communicate swiftly, directly and extremely transparently) and to trust each other. When you hold people’s lives in your hand, trust and teamwork look a little different. The aviation industry instituted something called Crew Resource Management, which encourages crew members to be open and transparent about when they aren’t in the right mental state, or if they didn’t sleep well the night before, without any judgment. Wow!
The fundamental way they operate is: It’s not your right to challenge me, it’s your obligation… because this isn’t about me, it’s about everyone else. Talk about not taking things personally and putting the bigger picture above everything else. How powerful! There are many elements of how the aviation industry behaves that we can emulate in a knowledge working (more low stakes) environment. Here is a great podcast episode on this topic.
I invite you to explore your relationship with trust.
How does trust differ for you in your personal life and in your professional life? How do you feel about vulnerability? How do you feel about not being in control? How can you lean into trusting others in the workplace?
Psychology Today – Basics of Trust
Why you may have trust issues & how to overcome them
Enter your email below to receive the monthly newsletter, Insights, where I share expert insights, learning, and advice!
