Making Mistakes: Regaining Trust after a Fall

It’s a fact that everybody makes mistakes; it’s just human nature. However, it’s what happens afterward that sets the tone in the workplace. Managers are people, too, but when a manager’s relationship with a team member becomes rocky, it can make working together feel nearly impossible.

It can take months or even years for a manager to build trust with a team. Unfortunately, it only takes one misstep to destroy the trust they worked so hard to earn. Take this fictitious conversation between Bill, a new manager, and Amy his VP:

Bill: Amy, I really screwed up. I lost my cool and yelled at Heidi in a meeting today.

Amy: You did what?

Bill: I know we don’t do that here, but I did. I’ve been having trouble at home. My kid has the flu so I haven’t been sleeping well. My mom is receiving hospice care and I’m trying to manage that, too. I really thought I was doing okay, but when Heidi missed her deliverables again, I blew up at her in our weekly meeting.

Amy: Okay, you already know you were wrong for that reaction, so what can you do about it?

Bill: I can wait until it blows over…?

Amy: No, Bill. The longer you wait, the more the team, and especially Heidi, will resent you. They know it was inappropriate behavior, so the best thing to do is acknowledge that what you did was wrong and apologize to the entire team, and directly to Heidi.

Bill: I’m not sure how to do that.

Amy: You can say something like, “I had a bad-manager day today. I was upset about other things, and I took it out on you, Heidi. I was wrong, and I shouldn’t have done that. Team, I’m sorry I reacted the way I did. Heidi, I’m mortified that I lost my temper, and I hope you’ll forgive me. It won’t happen again.”

Heidi might still be upset, but an immediate apology will go a long way toward rebuilding trust with her, as well as the entire team.

How to Rebuild Workplace Trust

Additional steps can be taken to repair relationships when trust has been eroded:

•  Admit you screwed up. When a manager makes a mistake, it is important to take the time to acknowledge it.

• Never place the blame on someone on your team. This should go without saying, but it happens far too often. If you made the mistake, own it.                                                                                                                                          
• Demonstrate that you truly understand the impact of your misstep. This step requires you to ask questions and really listen to the other person’s answers. Show that you completely understand the effect your actions had on the other person.
• Demonstrate that you learned from your mistake. When you do something to cause distrust in your team, they will often question your overall competence as a leader. So, basically, you’re back to square one, and you’ll have to prove your worth to them all over again. By actively demonstrating that you’ve learned something valuable from your error, and are trying to incorporate that knowledge into your day-to-day, your team will slowly regain their confidence in your ability to lead.
• Let go and move on. This doesn’t mean you forget what happened or the impact damaged trust had on your team. It simply means you choose to focus on the insights and deeper understanding you’ve gained as a result of the situation. No one benefits by continually rehashing old mistakes, so use the knowledge to build a better you.

When you commit to regaining your team’s trust, you have to be honest and open, admit your mistakes, and work to correct them. It may take time and patience (on both sides), but it can be done, and you’ll be a better manager for the effort.

Keeping employees motivated and engaged is the key to success for every business. But, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to motivating employees since, obviously, different people are motivated by different things at different times. The traditional concept of associate satisfaction is very important; however, it is not as critical to an organization’s success as the extent to which individual employees are engaged.

When employees are truly engaged, they feel a sense of ownership of the business and are more motivated to apply effort to work toward the company’s overall mission and goals, as well as embrace its values. Engaged employees positively influence the buying behaviors of customers leading to higher customer loyalty and profitable growth. Or as Timothy R. Clark, author of Epic Change: How to Lead Change in the Global Age says, “Highly engaged employees make the customer experience. Disengaged employees break it.”

We’ve likely all seen or taken anonymous employee engagement surveys designed by upper management to gauge how employees feel about their workplace experiences. It’s unfortunate that, far too often, these surveys are emailed out, the employees dutifully take them, the results are tallied and then… crickets. It’s an enormous missed opportunity to take the metaphorical temperature of teams to find out their opinions about the business and its leadership, as well as discover what drives them to help the business succeed. After all, if you want to know how you’re doing, ask your employees! And then act on what they tell you.

These surveys are designed to measure the level of employee engagement and the employment experience across many different aspects of the work environment. To identify key motivation drivers, it’s important to analyze the responses to understand what really makes a difference to employees (i.e., what motivates them to do their jobs well). Improving specific drivers can improve overall employee engagement.

A Paycheck Won’t Guarantee Passion 

While a great salary is the only motivator for some employees, this doesn’t hold true for most. And it’s important that you find out what motivates yours.

Every year, polling company Gallup conducts a “State of the American Workplace” study, which is based on the following four types of employees’ performance development needs:

• • basic needs
  • individual needs
  • teamwork needs
  • personal growth needs

These levels provide a roadmap for managers to motivate and develop their team members and improve the team members’ performance, with each level building on the previous one. The questions they ask in their survey are answered on a ranking scale of 1-5 (1 being worst and 5 being best), and directly correspond to the levels above:

• • I know what is expected of me at work. (1)
• • I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right. (1)
• • At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day. (2)
• • In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work. (2)
• • My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person. (2)
• • There is someone at work who encourages my development. (2)
• • At work, my opinions seem to count. (3)
• • The mission or purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important. (3)
• • My associates or fellow employees are committed to doing quality work. (3)
• • I have a best friend at work. (4)
• • In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress. (4)
  • This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow. (4)
• You can very easily pattern your own survey after this one and see where your employees fall in the engagement scale. And then take these three steps toward better motivation among your workforce: First, believe what your common sense is telling you about how to create a healthy, productive work environment (open, honest communication; clear expectations; opportunities for your employees to shine). Second, figure out exactly what motivates your employees to do their best work. Third, measure engagement at your organization. You can gain valuable insights and probably more than a few a-ha moments from the results. And there’s nothing like hard data to get the attention of leadership.