When I wrote about the reasons why people don’t trust their leaders, the responses I received indicated that many employees are stuck in situations just like this, and looking for advice on how to deal with it.
Unfortunately, it seems that more and more employees are finding it difficult to trust their leaders. Even those who genuinely enjoy their jobs, the people they work with and the teamwork camaraderie of their workplace culture don’t necessarily feel comfortable working with or trust their leader.
During times of uncertainty, many leaders go into survival mode. They will step-back and observe the workplace dynamics in order to better understand where they best fit and how to politically navigate the changing terrain. In the process, they find themselves losing their leadership identity and subsequently the respect and trust of their employees that they ignored while fending for themselves. For employees, they now feel trapped because the leader they once trusted to have their backs is now viewed as a “conditional” leader. As such, employees can no longer be as transparent with their leader as they once were.
Whether it’s this type of situation or another that led you to lose trust in your leader, the question is: how do you co-exist with a leader that can’t be trusted?
You can’t succeed as a leader if you attempt to go at it alone. The success of a leader requires strong followership that is earned over time. As such, employees have more power than they think they do over their leaders. Without employees that trust them, leaders have short-term, artificial influence, at best. As such, leaders must work to earn the trust of their employees by investing in those relationships – just as much as employees must work to earn the trust of their leaders.
A title and reputation of influence may allow a leader to reach for their next opportunity, but in order to sustain their leadership momentum, they must continue to find ways to engage with and earn trust from each new crop of employees they inherit and are responsible to lead. Because this is no easy task, you often find leaders who hire employees they have worked with in the past – established employee relationships that don’t require additional time or energy to cultivate trust.
So when you have a leader that can’t be trusted, do you just ignore it or do you take action?
With the aforementioned in mind, here are seven things employees can do when they are having difficulty trusting their leader (boss) – to assure their career goals and workplace performance momentum are not disrupted along the way.
1. Hold Your Leader Accountable
Much like you are accountable to support your leader’s goals – they too have a responsibility for what you can expect from their leadership. If your leader is not willing to commit to a set of leadership expectations, you have the wrong leader.
You need to manage your leader as much as they manage you. There is nothing in the HR manual that prohibits you from doing this. The only one that is ultimately responsible for your career is you – so learn how to manage your leader before the situation spirals out of control or you will find yourself regretting it down the road.
2. Work More Closely With Your Leader
Be deliberate about working more closely with your leader. Perhaps you can’t trust them because they are threatened by you. The closer you work with them, the easier it is for you to see how they treat others. You can learn about the types of people that your leader gravitates towards or away from. The more you know, the closer you can potentially get to finding the common ground you need to build a relationship of trust.
Additionally, the closer you work with your leader, the more you can test the relationship. Many times your lack of trust is based on your perceptions – not necessarily the realities of the situation at hand. Perhaps in the end you will find that you have issues that are making it difficult for your leader to trust you.
3. Put Everything in Writing
This can be an exhaustive and a time-consuming process, but putting it down in writing allows you to track behavioral patterns, subtle cues, probability patterns and situational circumstances that may trigger trust issues with your leader. Leaders are often not aware of the actions that lead others not to trust them.
Connecting the dots for your leader may be all the proof they need to course correct and turn around the attitude or behavior that is causing others not to trust them.
This gives you the opportunity to provide your leader feedback. If they respond positively, and you begin to witness a different attitude – one of greater respect and appreciation for you as an employee – you may just have won your leader over. If so, you will have fewer headaches from worrying about the relationship and where you stand.
4. Do Others Feel the Same Way?
I am not suggesting that you inform your leader’s boss about your concerns too quickly. My point is that you may be the issue if others don’t feel the same way. Perhaps your own insecurities make it difficult to trust your leader’s approach and style – and a leader will certainly not attempt to change for one person.
If others can’t trust your leader -- much like you can’t – then you may have the justification for what your gut has been telling you all along. If others are fine with your leader (including his/her boss), then you may need to better assess and understand your relationship with your leader. Perhaps it may just be growing strained or has possibly run its course.
5. Confront the Situation
Though you may not trust your leader, you can certainly co-exist if they are not trying to create a disruptive environment for you. However, if it is evident that your leader has no real plans for you or use for your contributions in the long-term – you know it is time to confront your leader.
Compare notes. Is your leader’s agenda for the department and/or functional area you serve in alignment with your understanding of it? If not, find out why you are not in sync and get back on track. You and your leader are equally accountable. Perhaps there is a communication gap. Also, ask your leader where you fit in their short and longer term plans.
If you are having trouble trusting your leader, confront the situation before it’s too late. You can complain all you want, but that doesn’t solve anything. Take action and reclaim any momentum that you may have lost along the way.
6. Focus More On Your Own Reputation
We often spend too much time thinking about how to appease our leaders and merely co-exist with them rather than finding ways to influence advancement and gravitate towards success. As such, clear your mind and focus more on building your own reputation.
Early on in my career I fell into the trap of working with a leader that seemed threatened by me and thus didn’t take the time to build a relationship. When I felt his resistance to engage, it became difficult to trust him and work with him. Unfortunately, he had already made up his mind that his goal was to make things difficult for me. Though he was 20 years my senior, he quickly realized that my 5 year track record and hard-earned reputation carried more weight than his 5 months at the company and experience as a leader. Instead of focusing on this leader’s issues with me, I focused on the work at hand and delivered results. My influence grew stronger and the aforementioned leader’s impact weakened as he spent his time on the wrong things.
Don’t we see this with leaders more often than we would like? Stay focused on those things you can control and be genuine and authentic about it.
7. Leave the Organization
There may come a time when you just can’t take the pressure or manage the situation any longer. If you have tried the other six steps to no avail, then there is no sense in spending any more valuable time on something that is unproductive and holding you back.
When you reach this point, ask yourself these questions and be honest to hold yourself equally accountable:
- Is your leader knowingly setting you up for failure?
- Do they consistently attempt to position you in a negative light with other colleagues? Is it just you or do they also do this with others on the team?
- Do they continue to talk about you behind your back?
- Does their presence in a room negatively impact your ability to perform?
- Does your relationship with your leader damage your own reputation?
You have a choice. Don’t wait – activate yourself. Don’t sit around and wait until you reach the point of no return with your leader. Many times a lack of trust is the result of jealousy or envy that you have towards your leader or that he or she has towards you. You may threaten their power and influence and not even be aware of it. Perhaps your presence alone naturally outshines that of your leader. It is difficult to trust a leader who interprets this as a barrier to their own advancement and nothing more. On the other hand, the best leaders will see this as an opportunity for the betterment of a healthier whole – and those are the leaders you know you can trust.
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