10 Ways Leaders Erode Trust Without Realizing It
This is part 3 of The Math of Trust: A Leader’s Guide. Read the headlines for the main ideas. If you want details or justification, dig into the paragraphs that follow the headline.
We've made the case for leaders taking ownership of trust in their teams and organizations. We've laid out trust as an equation of time plus consistency. Here are ten ways you may be sabotaging trust without realizing it.
Trust breaks down when there is no clear, documented vision or strategy.
Research is clear: we have a deep need to make sense of the world around us. At work, we must know our direction and mission. We also need the background—the "why" and beliefs—that give it context. This context is what a business vision provides.
A vision can only provide this context when it is simple and clear. People must be able to see, understand, and remember it. Without a vision like this, people struggle to align their efforts. Everyone finds it hard to make a meaningful impact on the team or the business.
Without a clear vision, a leader's guidance can seem arbitrary. It may seem to people to be driven by the leader's emotional state that day. The same situation results when vision and strategy exist but aren't communicated in a straightforward way. Another breakdown results when vision and strategy are simple and clear but not reinforced on a consistent basis. Leaders end up eroding trust in each of these cases.
Trust breaks down when there is uncertainty about how to navigate the road ahead.
Even with a clear vision and strategy, any uncertainty about how to bring them to life can erode trust. A strategy outlines a company's or team's focus. It frames the single priority. It explains the reasons for choices. It lays out a path toward the ultimate vision. The lack of a clear strategy reinforces a perception of inconsistency. Inconsistency breaks our trust equation.
Some of the ambiguities that can further erode trust:
Lack of a meaningful and consistent set of processes for realizing the strategy.
Lack of clarity about key milestones and results that advance the team along the path to the outcome.
Trust breaks down when clarity is missing in decision-making and critical behaviors.
A company's core values are its most valued behaviors and decision-making frameworks. Many companies do not define these in a way that people can use to make decisions or take action.
Without core values guiding actions and decisions:
Praise and reprimands of team members can seem inconsistent.
Explanations of what or where to improve can seem inconsistent.
Taking well-intentioned feedback as a personal attack.
These situations break the trust equation.
Trust breaks down from too many "priorities" or continual shifting of those priorities.
Leaders breach the consistency clause when priorities shift without warning or explanation. People may see a change as random. Even when you use clear logic, changes can seem random if people aren't following along.
Creating a wish list of things to do and calling each one a priority has the same effect. "Priori" in Latin means "first". Leaders break the consistency clause when they don't at least sequence that list of "things to do."
Trust breaks down from fuzzy roles and responsibilities.
Ambiguous roles create confusion about who owns any given process, decision, or target. Leaders often cite "job descriptions" as the solution. Recruiters and job boards guide these descriptions to attract candidates. This type of summary lacks basic information about decision ownership and authority. That information is necessary for people once work has begun.
Another source of inconsistency is when one person holds multiple roles, but it is not acknowledged.
Finally, leaders sometimes make a target or project "co-owned" by more than one person. Consistency is more complicated for the two co-owners, who must now determine who owns each decision or deliverable. In practice, co-ownership situations undermine results most of the time.
Each of these circumstances can lead to a team experiencing shifts that to them, don't make sense. They also lead to missed targets. In all of these cases, leaders break the trust equation.
Trust breaks down when accountability is missing.
The trust equation breaks in environments that lack clear accountability. Teams experience this when there is no process to review or surface missing commitments. You might hear: "We say we are going to do [a thing], but we never do it."
This situation also arises when leaders get in the way of delivering commitments.
Trust breaks down when you don't address challenges constructively.
Ignoring issues or blaming others sends a clear message: don't raise concerns or seek help. In the best case, this behavior misses an opportunity to build trust. In the worst case, it leads to trust breakdowns when the problems finally blow up.
Trust breaks down from inconsistent, unhelpful feedback or performance evaluations.
Sporadic or inconsistent feedback leaves team members unsure of their standing and performance. Leaders who don't give clear, actionable help and guidance often bottle up frustrations. Then, when it's too much for the leader to bear any longer, they explode in one form or another. The early silence doesn't match the later frustrated response, breaking the consistency clause in the trust equation.
Trust breaks down when there is a misalignment between stated values and actual behaviors.
When leaders or the organization fail to act, employees notice. Consistency then falls apart.
One company I'll call Examp.ly was a client of mine. The CEO expressed frustration that he wasn't seeing people take ownership of outcomes. At the same time, he would take up all the time in meetings. He'd give people a minute or so to raise ideas. Then, he'd shoot those ideas down with every hypothetical reason he could think of. In his mind, he wanted people to prove him wrong and defend their ideas. To his people, it seemed he was intent on proving himself to be the smartest person in the room.
Another example came from a smaller client we'll call Examplify.com. One team leader took up every meeting by lecturing people on the company's problems. At the end of the meeting, he'd close by saying, "We keep talking about this, but nothing happens." The team members had solid, well-thought-out ideas. However, they had no time to voice their ideas and felt blocked from developing them. As a result, they learned to keep their mouths shut. This situation eroded trust on both sides.
Consider the above to be anti-patterns for building trust.
One way to protect trust is to use these 10 things as anti-patterns. If you become aware of falling into one of these traps, stop and do the opposite.
Now you know things to avoid. We'll examine specific, simple, and methodical ways to avoid them and build trust. First, we'll look at some of the common ways people try and then get it wrong.