What happens when a leader doesn’t trust their team? Or when their team doesn’t trust them, or each other? What happens to a business when the workplace is infected with distrust?
Nothing good.
What makes it worse is that distrust often goes undiscussed and unresolved. It’s an uncomfortable topic people tend to avoid. But the longer it’s left to fester, the more destruction it causes. Over time, it could lead to irreparable damage that may just spell the end of an entire organization.
Distrust is defined as a lack of trust or confidence. In the workplace, this can look like:
Keep in mind, distrust is not low trust, it’s NO trust. A complete lack of trust in any relationship can be dangerous, but in a professional working relationship, it can be seriously detrimental.
Every organization relies on the quality of its relationships to operate efficiently, but when workers within an organization don’t trust each other, those vital relationships start to deteriorate. Over time, that distrust can cause:
When left unchecked, distrust has the power to completely dismantle your organization from the inside out. It may start small, with gossip or rumors causing hesitation, but it can spiral out of control fast, leaving companies scrambling to recover.
There are a few reasons why distrust shows up in the workplace. Generally speaking, distrust stems from experiencing one or more many negative interactions within someone in the past. What makes these interactions negative can vary from situation to situation, but often, they’ll include one of the following:
For instance, if a colleague vehemently promises to respond to urgent emails within a week, but they fail to do so time and time again, it may lead to co-workers distrusting them.
Distrust doesn’t come out of nowhere. Broken promises add up. But luckily, there are a few red flags that businesses can be on the lookout to spot these negative interactions early and keep them from getting out of control.
Where there’s smoke, more often than not, there’s fire. If tensions seem high, you might want to take a closer look behind the curtain. A lack of trust may drive team members to be more skeptical of others, demonstrate more defensive behaviors or engage in unproductive arguments.
If you distrust someone, chances are you’re not going to want to talk to them. You might notice teams with high distrust keep conversations to a minimum. If they do speak, they may have guarded conversations, keep secrets or flat out refuse to share crucial work-related
information with one another.
Trust breeds collaboration, but distrust? Not so much. Teams who don’t trust one another may be unwilling to work together, leading to more work being done in isolation and less projects receiving the amount of attention they need. Necessary feedback for improvements will go unnoted and productivity will screech to a halt.
Leaders who don’t trust their employees may resort to controlling or overseeing their work to an excessive extent. Some team members in non-leadership roles may take it upon themselves to micromanage their colleagues if they do not trust that they will get the job done right or on time.
Distrust can discourage employees from taking initiative, pursuing advancement opportunities, or even just participating much in the day-to-day. They might just “check out” entirely. Think about it: If you don’t trust that you will be adequately supported and valued in your efforts at work, how engaged would you be?
If you’ve noticed signs of distrust creeping into your workplace, there’s a few things you can do to nip it in the bud before it becomes an unfixable problem:
First and foremost, your team must address the issues that originally caused the distrust. Otherwise, unresolved conflicts will just continue and cause teams to develop deep seated resentment towards one another. Set aside time with your team to work through these problems and ensure everyone leaves feeling that their concerns were adequately addressed.
With the existing problems addressed, the next step is to chip away at the distrust left behind. The best way to do that is to urge your team to communicate any issues they’re experiencing openly and professionally moving forward. Transparency and honesty can do wonders for repairing relationships, creating psychologically safe environments and rebuilding trust.
To prevent issues from building distrust to begin with, build a culture of accountability. Ensure that everyone understands that they will be held personally responsible for their own tasks and behaviors in the workplace. With these parameters in place, teams will feel more empowered to take ownership of their work and more supported knowing leadership will correct other’s inappropriate or unproductive behaviors.
Whether you’ve noticed trust becoming an issue that’s impacting your workplace, or you’d simply like to learn better practices for building trust to prevent these issues from ever taking place, consider taking our course, Building Trust. It teaches leaders how to establish (and even repair) trust within their teams.
