Trust is a fundamental tenet of any human relationship. So it is no surprise that it influences how employees and employers relate. Relationships that have trust as their foundation can stand the test of time. Employees who have to work with the same people day in a day out must be able to count on their support. When there is trust, team members find it easier to depend on one another. This all makes it less complicated to fulfill individual responsibilities.
Trust is one of the leadership competencies that every manager must strive to build at the workplace because it starts from the top. If workers cannot believe in their leaders, then everything else hangs in the balance. Knowing how to regain trust after losing it goes a long way in structuring a positive corporate culture in your organization. But where do you start? Is there a right way to get your subordinates to believe in you again?
What Is Trust in the Workplace?
Trustworthiness is a very hard quality to build because it takes time. The line between authority and subordinate can sometimes be very blurry. You must work hard to get workers to trust your judgment and follow your lead. Trust at the workplace is what inspires engagement and productivity. An employee who trusts his or her manager won’t have a problem asking for help or voicing an opinion. It is because of trust that managers are able to implement changes without resistance from the workers because there is a level of faith involved.
Maintaining trust between a manager and employee can be quite challenging given that everyone has their principles, opinions, and way of doing things. As The Balance explains, organizations can destroy trust at the workplace in many different ways. Failure to walk the talk, lying, and broken promises are just a few of the reasons your workers may stop believing in anything you say. Depending on how corroded the trust is in the workplace, it may require a lot of patience to build it back up. The most suitable ways of how to regain trust will depend on what exactly happened to destroy it in the first place.
5 Essential Ideas on How to Regain Trust
The good news for managers who have lost their employees’ confidence is that there are ways you can remedy the situation. Understandably, running a team that doesn’t believe in you makes your job incredibly hard. First, you lose their trust, then their respect. Eventually, you don’t have any authority, moral or otherwise, as a leader. Before any of these happens, here is how to regain trust.
1. Admit Your Mistakes
If you are asking about how to regain trust from your workers, then you already know it is non-existent or chipping away. Buy why? What did you do to damage the belief that your subordinates had in you? Analyze your actions and admit their errors.
Don’t go into a trust-building exercise with excuses. If a team member did something that made you react in the wrong manner (or overact), then acknowledge your part in the incident. Set an example for the other workers and it will be easier for everyone else to adopt.
2. Be Honest
Most of the trust issues that arise in enterprises are due to a lack of honesty. Some people view lies as tools to getting ahead, regardless of the consequences. Lying to your team members can have several implications, because after a while, they will stop trusting anything from you. Sometimes people lie out of fear.
If you are conducting performance reviews, don’t lie to your workers to avoid conflict. Even lies of omission are damaging to a relationship. When wondering how to regain trust, apologize for not telling the truth to your co-workers. It will make a difference.
3. Keep Promises
Some managers have a habit of promising employees all sorts of things to entice them. Unfortunately, not many stick to those promises. Workers lose trust very fast if you keep letting them down. Don’t tell employees that you have a big client coming in and the deal is just about done and then fail to deliver. The simplest solution of how to regain trust in such an instance is to make it up to your workers.
- Start by apologizing for letting your promises fall through.
- Then, begin working on giving your word the credibility it once held.
- Make small promises that you know you can’t fail to keep and go from there.
4. Interact with Employees
One tool you can utilize on your how to regain trust journey is personal engagement with employees. Trusting the administration is hard enough for low-level workers without having a manager who doesn’t interact with people. Talking to individual employees and learning how they think can help a great deal in building a solid relationship.
Take the time to listen to employees who have something to say. Note that people act differently when working alone and as a group. Just because you are with your team every day doesn’t mean you know how everyone operates. An open door policy will get you one step closer when worrying about how to regain trust as a manager.
5. Be the Example
Don’t tell your employees to adhere to the company’s core values when you don’t do it yourself. Some executives focus too much on leading by authority instead of example. When you have the same work ethic that you hammer into employees, then it will be easier for them to follow it.
Show workers that doing things a certain way is valuable for the organization and the individual as well. If you did something that compromised your work ethic or was in contrast to what you preach, apologize for it. Tell your workers what you intend to do to ensure it never happens again.
To the First Brick
Knowing how to regain trust and doing it are not the same. A manager must be willing to put in the work and sweat to gain the confidence of his or her workers because that is what it takes. It may be necessary to get outside help to guide you on the right trust-rebuilding path.
Lack of trust can topple empires because it impedes open communication and honest interactions. Earn the trust of your employees, and your company will thank you for it.
Images: depositphotos.com.