The Leadership Trust Crisis

Welcome back, everybody. New research shows that there's a leadership crisis in the American workplace. It's causing burnout and turnover. So today, how leaders can course correct.

Beth Ridley is a leadership expert and workplace culture consultant. And she's back with more on why employees are tuning out and how people can charge can win them back. That's probably the key. Good to see you, Beth.

Hi. I feel like I'm always bringing the bad news.

I know on. I know exactly. But you're here to tell us how we can course correct. And I think that's the most important part because people feel it. So. Okay. Talk about trust in general. And why is this happening? They're losing trust.

Yeah. So trust really is, you know, you believe someone is going to do what they say they're going to do and they have their best interests at heart. Your best interests at heart. That's sort of key. And so I think there's so much going on in the workplace, so much change, that leaders aren't doing their best in terms of like communicating that in a way where people feel like they understand what's going on and you have your best interest at heart.

Yeah. You want to feel like somebody has your back. I totally get that. So what is trust at work? Explain what that means and why. I guess having trust in your leader really matters to the people who are working.

It matters most because if you don't trust someone, you're really not going to give it your all, lean in more, work through and navigate all the change, which is what a lot of companies are dealing with these days. And so it doesn't matter how good the strategy is, if people don't believe in it and believe that their leader has their best interests at heart, they're really not going to give it their all to wade through all the change.

So what's the data showing then in the decline of this trust in leaders?

It's really low. Like 14% of employees say that they trust their leader.

Wow.

What makes it worse is leaders aren't aware of that. If you ask leaders, they're like, yeah, people trust me. Because I think leaders, you know, they're not trying to not be trustworthy.

Yeah, right.

So they just have. There's a disability connect between like the reality and what employees are really perceiving.

Yeah. It sounds like a lack of awareness too, which is really important. So where is trust in leadership, do you feel declining the most?

It's sort of across the board. But there are some industries, again, where there's like a lot of like Changes that are happening in the sector. So you could think of the tech industry, a lot of layoffs. So again, you could think that that's full of a lack of trust because, you know, how much can you communicate about that in a way that employees are really buying in and understanding. Also, a lot of companies are still struggling with that sort of return back into the workplace dynamic. Yes. So there's new stated policies, but how they're actually playing out in reality, there's a disconnect between what's said and the reality. And then the last industry, I'll say is like any industry that's dealing with like a lot of burnout. So think of health care and even hospitality. Yeah, Right. These frontline workers, they're working really hard. The work never stops. They're feeling burnt out, they don't have work life. But they're feeling like leaders aren't really listening to them, really taking their concerns seriously or doing anything different to alleviate some of the pain that they're feeling.

So where in the hierarchy are these leaders hitting the most problems?

Well, the higher up you go, the more distance. But a lot of that is also some of trust is, do you have a personal connection to someone? So it's hard to trust someone if you actually don't know them. So the higher up you are as a leader, you. You just don't have that personal connection with people.

So people.

Exactly. They're not exactly buying what you're saying because they feel like, well, you don't really know me anyway. Do you really have my best interests at heart?

Fair. So who do employees tend to trust?

Your peers. Each other.

Yeah. More of somebody who's in a similar position to you rather than somebody really high up.

Yes.

Okay, good.

But also problematic because, you know, we only know, like, what we think. And so there's like a lot of gossip involved and misinformation. It's really the leaders that actually do have the credible information that we should be listening to if communicated properly.

Okay, so if someone's watching and they're a leader and they're kind of like, well, I don't know. I think people trust me. What are some visible signs that they don't have trust?

Okay, so people kind of check out if they don't trust you. So look for are people speaking in meetings or not? If your meetings are crickets and people aren't speaking up, it's probably because why should I bother gonna listen to me or nothing's gonna change.

Yep.

Even if you do anonymous surveys, if the response rate is low. It's probably because people don't trust. Like, how are you using this information? Yeah, it's anonymous. Is it really? And why should I bother? Because nothing is going to change. Fascinating. And then if people leave, that's like a really big signal. But yeah, you don't want to get to that. Yeah, right.

If you can stop it.

So what can leaders do then to bridge this gap and to regain trust?

I think there's really three important things. One, it really comes down to communication. You can never over communicate. Just when you think that you've communicated enough, communicate more. But communicate with transparency. That's key. And this requires a sort of like a new way of thinking about leadership. I think long gone are the days where, you know, there's information I can't share with influences. I don't want to send them over the edge. Treat employees like the adults that they are and they want that transparency. They want to know what can you tell them and what you can't. You know, what are you certain about, what are you uncertain about? And most importantly, the why. They really want to understand the why. They get that. They may not like the outcome, but they really want to understand the why. I think that's number one.

Yeah, we're out of time. But you also mentioned acknowledging mistakes.

Yes, every leader has the right to change their mind or to be wrong, but just admit that and also just build those personal relationships on a one on one basis. People trust you if they know you because you can demonstrate you have their best interest at heart.

And I think it's tricky if people are managing a lot of people to have a personal connection with everybody.

You know, prioritize it because you'll gain on the back end.

It's good stuff.

Beth, good to see you.

And to rewatch this segment or to send it to a co worker or maybe your leader, visit themorningblend.com.