Do Your Employees Trust You?
In Patrick Lencioni’s book, Five Dysfunctions of a Team, one of the things he discusses is that there is one base level dysfunction that impacts all the other dysfunctions – an absence of trust.
I tell credit union managers and leaders that trust takes a long time to develop and only seconds to destroy. It can almost never be completely rebuilt.
Trust is something you have to develop over time through consistency, through close proximity, and through being knowledgeable in your work.
As a leader, are you:
- Consistent? Do employees know how you’re going to react in situations? Are you the “same person” every day? You have to be in order to develop trust.
- Proximate? Are you around? Do employees know enough about you to see you as a person, not just a boss? They have to in order to develop trust.
- Knowledgeable? Do employees see you as a resource? They have to in order to develop trust.
The Gallup Group says that almost 70% of an employee’s engagement is directly attributable to their immediate supervisor because that’s the leader who’s in closest proximity to them. Unfortunately, in a recent survey, only 20% of employees said that they trust their manager. Why is that?
- We live in an age now where so many times we have seen all the things we trust undermined because they failed to live up to expectations.
- In today’s workplaces and organizations, trust is not given simply because someone has a position.
- Many managers have not proven they are trustworthy.
Trust has to be earned over time through consistency, proximity, and being knowledgeable. In our Vertex Management Development Training Program, we talk about team building. We discuss how to develop trust in order to build an effective team. We’d love to come to your credit union and do our Vertex Live Management Development Training Program. If you’d like to learn more, please reach out to me.
“Go for it gang! You know where to find me.” – Mike Neill
Michael Neill is the Chief Learning Officer of ServiStar. When he isn’t intravenously consuming his daily Diet Coke, you can find it at a Nashville Predators hockey game with his lovely bride, Becky, screaming helpful tips at the players.