When Employees Don’t Trust the Boss

February 2, 2010

In a previous post I addressed how important the attribute of trust is in leadership. Nothing impacts an organization’s overall productivity more than the level of trust found within it. But what happens when employees don’t trust their boss?

If you have strong and irrefutable evidence that your boss is not to be trusted, it seems to me you have four choices: 1) ignore the situation and hope things will improve on their own; 2) tell someone you believe can help make a change for the better; 3) leave your boss and find another job within or outside the company; 4) trust him anyway and help enable a change in behavior.

Ignore the situation. If you choose to avoid the problem of an untrustworthy boss, this only perpetuates the distrust and does nothing to improve your life. In addition, by not confronting him, you are ultimately accepting his untrustworthy behavior. A person cannot be untrustworthy by himself—someone has to be the recipient of this distrust. You have a choice as to whether or not this is you and, if you fail to confront him, you are enabling his untrustworthy behavior. Like any relationship, you have to take responsibility for your part.

Tolerating untrustworthy behavior results in harming yourself by continuing to work for such a person, and also contributes to the dysfunction of the organization as a whole. By not doing something to rectify things, you become as responsible for the dysfunction as your boss.

Tell someone who can help. This is a tricky option because your boss’s untrustworthy behavior is unlikely limited to you alone and, if nothing has been done, it may be condoned or at least tolerated by others. Who you talk to and what you expect him or her to do could end up reflecting poorly on you. If you do speak up, it is best to have your facts straight with plenty of supporting evidence. You should also make it clear what you believe needs to be done about it. And be prepared for nothing to actually happen.

If you have a progressive company where 360 assessments are regularly conducted, then perhaps the feedback of a lack of trust will get back to your boss anonymously and encourage him to rectify his behavior. However, without specific examples to refer to, any comments regarding his untrustworthy behavior may only breed ill-will towards those around him. Regardless, by not confronting your boss directly, you are leaving others to determine your fate.

Leave your boss. You could choose to look for a new position away from your boss either within the company or at another one. By doing so, you may be taking a stand that integrity matters and you will not tolerate working for someone who lacks it. If you choose to communicate to others the distrust you feel in your boss, this could have immediate and/or long-term repercussions. Like it or not, your immediate supervisor can have a huge impact on your future employment. It is therefore important to protect this relationship as much as you can, even if you lack respect for his behavior.

Trust him anyway. Okay this may be the hardest to swallow, but I think it is ultimately the right choice even if after your best efforts you end up needing to move back to the previous option. If you believe your boss is not to be trusted, I suggest you trust him anyway. I don’t mean this out of pure naivety or passive allegiance, but out of hope for a change in behavior. Most human beings (bosses included), respond favorably to being trusted. If you are genuine in your trust and listen respectfully to him, he is likely to reciprocate and trust you back. That’s how trust works and it is also how it spreads.

Trust requires respectful listening and this is filled with opportunities for self-improvement. Listening attentively with an open mind and open heart can make a huge difference in one’s ability to trust others. Trusting him may very well cultivate trustful behavior.

Trust is a two-way street. It cannot be imposed on someone and it requires risk. The only way to find trust is to look for it and expect it in others. This is risky, yet it is the only way trust can build in any relationship.

It’s difficult for most of us to confront any person in our lives. When it’s our boss, this becomes magnified because we believe he may use his power over us to make our work lives worse or perhaps fire us.

The thing to keep in mind is that everyone wants to be trusted and most people will make every effort to become trustworthy. In addition, most of us also want feedback on how we are being perceived. As hard as it is for you to talk to your boss about untrustworthy behavior, if your mistrust is representative of a group of people and not yourself alone, you may be surprised to find just how willing he is to listen and try to improve things.

More importantly, you will have taken a very courageous leadership step that will serve you throughout your personal as well as your professional life.

Mark Craemer            www.craemerconsulting.com

Thoughts on Low Job Satisfaction

January 6, 2010

If less than half of those lucky to be employed today are happy with their jobs, what does this say about the state of the American worker? According to Tuesday’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer article, employee dissatisfaction has been on the rise for more than a generation and is due not only to wages failing to keep up with inflation and the rising cost of health care, but the fact that “fewer workers consider their jobs to be interesting.”

Does it matter that employees find their jobs interesting? Well, I contend this is extremely important because interest in the work can determine just how competitive we are as a country in the world economy.

“The downward trend in job satisfaction could spell trouble for the overall engagement of U.S. employees and ultimately employee productivity,” says Lynn Franco, director of the Consumer Research Center of The Conference Board. Their research, based on a survey with 5,000 U.S. households, goes on to report that a full 22 percent of respondents say they don’t expect to be in their current job in the next year.

According to The Conference Board report, “The growing dissatisfaction across and between generations is important to address because it can directly impact the quality of multi-generational knowledge transfer—which is increasingly critical to effective workplace functioning.”

If this low rate of job satisfaction results in stifled innovation, lower productivity, and reduced multi-generational knowledge transfer, we’ve got some serious problems in the workplace. So what can be done?

It seems to me that better understanding the root of the problem is essential. For instance, this apparent downward trend has continued for the last two decades and throughout our boom and bust economic cycles. The current down economy is therefore not the heart of the problem. Though I am not an economist, I don’t believe simply adding more service type jobs to replace outsourced manufacturing jobs will resolve things.

We need to leverage good old American ingenuity as well as our technical expertise and creativity to create sustainable market opportunities for new goods and services. We also need something that will ignite workers in every sector of the economy to contribute their best in order to meet the many challenges of the 21st century. With increasing terrorism, global warming, greater energy demands and other big challenges, there is no shortage of opportunities available. Government and business needs to work cooperatively to fully ignite our country again in the same way we did during World War II and for the moon shot of the last century.

No matter what market opportunities may become available to create new and better jobs, we also need to find ways to increase employee engagement and strengthen trust and respect in employer-employee relationships. And this is something that can begin immediately. The worker who feels he or she is truly the organization’s most important asset is a more satisfied worker—regardless of the job. Organizations that invest in their employees today will remain competitive in the future.

A meaningful investment in your employees will help bring about increased job satisfaction. Whether this means better aligning resources with tasks, providing greater guidance and support, strengthening general communication, or results-based team building activities, your investment can reap bottom-line business results immediately.

Mark Craemer                              www.craemerconsulting.com