The Importance of TRUST

Why is it important for your team to trust you? Does that come easy, or does it take considerable effort to build?

Many decades ago, when I was a manager running a 350 FTE program, I was awakened by the company shift director asking me to come to work immediately. A complete shift of over 300 agents was refusing to log in. The problem originated from an incident a few hours ago when a couple of employees were brutally beaten up by a few cab drivers. The employees had been taken to the hospital, and they were worried for their safety.

I reached work and, along with the facilities director, investigated the issue. I soon realized that the explanation was much different from what the employees had been told. It was the injured employees who had first beaten a cab driver because he refused to stop the cab for a smoke/tea break (company rules did not allow such ad-hoc stops). It was only when the driver was beaten that he passed a communication to the other drivers, and they were waiting for the employees outside the office – the cab never made it inside the premises.

When the real reason was explained to the teams, the issue subsided, and the teams logged in. There was no argument or sign of dissent. Who was at fault, could it have been avoided, were the cab drivers right in retaliating – these can be discussed at length, but that is not the topic here.
The point is around the trust that the employees had in us. This level of trust originated from the fact that we were never taught to lie, always speaking and sharing the truth, in all situations.

Managing teams is a responsibility that one needs to take seriously. It involves taking care of your people, taking care of the customers, and keeping the best interests of the account/company in mind. The Great Places to Work Survey has multiple sections to measure management effectiveness around communication, expectations setting, responding to queries, approachability, competence, actions matching words, and much more. If your organization has taken the survey, they may have team-level data that you could use to understand the gaps and fix the ‘trust’ within the team