3 Ways to Gain Your Employees' Trust
By 629be8dfa21198f120ba6247 · · 5 min read
One of the biggest mistakes you can make as a leader is to lose your team’s trust. A lot of leaders aren’t even aware that they are making these mistakes. Once a disconnect between executives and employees happens, it can only get worse. Establishing a more trusting relationship is the only way to repair it.
You need to maintain your employees’ confidence in you. You need to reconsider things and define what’s truly important to be able to do this. There are a few steps you can take to establish this trust. Take a look at some of them.
Build a culture of transparency
In order to establish trust, executives must be clear about what they’re doing. That is the basis of transparent company culture. In most workplaces, what senior leaders do are often kept from their employees. They only find out about decisions after they’ve been made, and are not aware of how senior leadership arrived at that. This leads them to assume negative things about their leaders, and they can end up harboring distrust at management.
To address this failure at transparency, leaders should always keep open communication lines with their team members. Make sure they’re aware of what’s going on in the company. Keep them in the loop about shake-ups and potential changes, and inform them of the reasoning behind each one. By making them informed, they’ll leave little room for doubt in your motivations.
Equip your managers well
Senior executives are considered the face of the company. It’s normal for employees to think that these leaders don’t exactly have their best interests in mind. As their work becomes more stressful, they might harbor ill feelings towards the company, believing that management doesn’t care about them. To prevent this kind of thinking, senior executives should make sure that the managers provide proper support to the employees.
Ensure that your managers are able to address the needs of their teams. This way, your employees wouldn’t feel that they are being ignored by the company. Managers must be trained continually as well, in order to better guide and support their teams. This will also allow them to show confidence in their employees, making them feel better about their jobs in return.
Give your employees a voice
Nothing will establish trust between senior management and employees than by the leaders showing their teams that they trust them. Giving their input some value will lessen work-related frustrations on their end, allowing them to perform better and stay longer. This is a great way to enhance company culture as well.
Discuss with them if you need to make changes to the company. This is especially important if it’s directly related to them – they will be the ones to know how to best fix their situation. Always be open to their ideas and actively involve them in decision making when you can. You can also establish their direct relationship with executives by scheduling regular meetings with senior management, giving them an avenue to speak their minds. It takes work to encourage your employees to express their ideas openly, but it will be for everyone’s benefit.