EP 52: Why Only 23% of Employees Trust Their Leaders, and How to Fix It

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Renee Thompson:
Plants thrive and grow in a peaceful, nourished environment, right? Well, it's the same with human beings. But what if that environment is not so peaceful? What if it's toxic? Welcome to Coffee Break: Breaking the Cycle of Bullying in Healthcare – One Cup at a Time. In this podcast, you'll get practical, evidence-based strategies to help you cultivate and sustain a healthy and respectful work culture by tackling an age-old problem in healthcare: bullying and incivility. I am your host, Dr. Renee Thompson.

Renee Thompson:
Hi, everyone! Welcome back to another episode of the Coffee Break podcast. I hope wherever you are, you're having a great week and that you're actually feeling good about being a leader because, let's face it, there are some days we don't feel so good about being a leader. I hope you're having one of those good weeks, not one of those what-the-heck-was-I-thinking? weeks when I said yes to being in a leadership role. Okay, today it's just me, and I want to talk to you about something that I find myself talking about a lot with leaders. And it's if you really want to cultivate a healthy work culture, everything begins with trust. I know it, and you know it. And we could probably spend several weeks talking about trust, but today I want to give you just a few things to consider, and I want to focus the gist of this podcast episode today, helping you to figure out what your trust wobble is, okay? That's the plan today. All right. Why is trust such a big deal? Okay. We talk about psychological safety. We talk about the leader building relationships and all that with their teams. It, everything begins with trust. And we know from the studies that are out there right now, gallup. They actually did a study that showed only 23% of their employees actually trust their leaders. They've done the math. When you don't have trust in your department, when you don't have trust among the team in your organization, it's actually your biggest expense. Because when people don't trust the people who they're working with, they'll leave. And you look at things like retention. Pretty much unless somebody's moved somewhere because they had to, people are leaving, and we always say because of how they're being treated by their coworkers. Sometimes it's just there's this lack of trust, not only with their coworkers, in particular with their leadership team. We know that employees who actually trust their leaders, they show higher engagement, productivity, creativity, all that good stuff. And those people who don't, they experience a lot of burnout and are more likely to quit. So we know trust is a big deal. And again, Stephen Covey wrote The Speed of Trust and how when you trust someone, it makes things easier, things go faster, but when you don't, it slows it down. And if you've never read The Speed of Trust, I highly recommend that you read it. It could be a really great book club for your leadership team if you do that. But when we look at trust, some of the dimensions of trust, it's having positive relationships with the people who you lead, okay? Talked about this a lot. Building relationships is one of our eight essential skills that, you know, of a healthy team. I've spoken about this many times. We've shared relational rounding and how your round should really be focused on building a relationship with your team. I've written a lot about this, and I'll put some of those articles in the show notes. But we also know, too, that consistency matters. One of our strategies, because I love giving leaders practical strategies, one of our strategies to build a relationship, improve trust, cultivate a healthy work culture is to, as I call it, bookend your days. Let's face it, you may have really good intentions when you come into work on, I'm going to spend some time with this person and do some coaching, and I'm going to help develop that person. I'm going to do all these great things. I'm going to work on my metrics. And as soon as you hit the door, something happens and you realize you're putting out fire after fire. You only have control over two times in your, let's just say, workday. What you do when you first walk in the door, and what you do when you're ready to leave. That's it. Everything else is a crapshoot. So what do you do? The bookend strategy is connect with one person on your team on your way in, and one person on your way out. That's it. When I say connect with them, it is say their name. It could be a nurse, it could be respiratory. It could be a physician. It could be, fill in the blank. Anyone say, Ηey, Jim, how are you this morning? Hey, how's your mom? I know the last time we talked, she was having hip surgery. Whatever you know about them that you're willing to talk about because people actually, nowadays, they want to talk about their personal life, sometimes a little too much. So just be mindful of that. But whatever you know about them, have that conversation, check-in with them. Hey, how's school going? Because maybe they're in a graduate program right now. Hey, you're in a stats course. I love stats, and that's true. I actually love stats, I like math. How's the stats going? Do you need any help? And it's just to connect with another human being in your department in a manner that's not focused on the work. It's focused on them as a human being, okay? So that's a practical strategy. Do that on your way in. Do that on your way out. So when I say consistency, if you're going to start doing something like that, you can't start it one day and then not do it for another six months. Or I always tell our clients at Healthy Workforce as a standing agenda item in every meeting. Don't start it. Okay, we're going to have healthy workforce as the standing agenda item and then not do it again. When you're trying to establish trust, one of the dimensions is consistency. And then the third dimension is actually competence. Do you make good decisions? Are you proactive or are you someone who's reactive as a leader? And that's actually something I struggle with. I tend to be very reactive. I don't know if it's the Italian in me, okay? I just react immediately. I've learned over the years to pause for reacting. You do that. I'm an old cardiac nurse, so I call it the compensatory pause from like after a PVC. You get that little pause. Let me pause here. Let me think for a moment, and then I react, okay? So are you proactive or are you reactive? And do you have some level of expertise that people can come to you? Now, sometimes if you're a new leader, you don't have that yet. And I used to struggle with that anytime I was new in a role, new to an organization, I don't like being the person who doesn't know everything. I liked it when I'm in the position where people come to me. Oh, hey, Renee, I have this question, and I'm like, Οh, here you go. And I would always know the answer. And so there's got to be a little level of competence that people trust. Like I said, your decision-making skills, you have something of value to add to your department. So it starts with those three dimensions, okay? You got to build relationships with people. You have to be consistent in how you show up every day. They can't be afraid of walking on eggshells around you. You can't be one of those leaders that people, they never know what they're going to get when you walk in the door. Who's going to show up today? So consistency in not only how you show up, but what you do, and then some competence. All of that can then lead you down this path of recognizing every single one of us as a leader has what we refer to as a trust wobble. Okay. So funny. Everybody knows everybody who knows me knows this about me. I will read something and then it is, I'm in love with it. Okay, so I talk about it all the time. I refer to it all the time. You've probably heard me talk about Radical Candor, Kim Scott, you've probably heard me talk about lateral agility and silos and all of that. I heard that term and it resonates with me so well. Here's one of those. And gosh, I think I actually read this probably 5 or 6 years ago. It's an article that I read in the Harvard Business Review, one of my favorite, okay, magazines to read. And it was about the fact that every single leader has a trust wobble. The key for you is to figure out what your wobble is, because it's your wobble that affects your team's ability to trust you as a leader. And we've already talked about the negative impact it has in a department if people don't trust their leader. Okay. So there are three wobbles. Your wobble is either empathy, logic, or authenticity. Empathy: do your people believe that you care about them? Okay? Do they believe that you care? Logic: do they trust your decision-making? Okay. That's the competence part. And authenticity: do they believe that they're dealing with the real you? Okay. And I will put the link to the article in the show notes because you got to read this article. It is fantastic. It is one of my go-to. Every time I'm working with a client. I always share this article and we have a conversation at some point about their trust wobble because it's really interesting. In the consulting work that we do, I spend a lot of time coaching the leaders, talking with the leaders, and some of that is in groups, but other times it's one-on-one, and those are some of my favorites. I love having one-on-one time with the leader. And it's funny, I can usually tell in 1 or 2 conversations what their trust wobble is, and then we work on it. So let me give you an example. Empathy: does your team believe that you care about them? I was working with a leader who had been the leader, the manager of an ICU, okay? I think it was a CCU. And then they added a second unit to them. They do this, right? You have one unit? Nope. You have one now; they'll give you two, like two for the price of one. Not uncommon right now. That's a whole other conversation, you know, the span of control that a manager has. He grew up in this intensive care unit, and then they gave him this telemetry unit. It's just, it's human nature. All right. I'm going to say this, but I don't really mean this. Especially if my daughters are listening to me right now. But when you have two kids or more there, sometimes you have a favorite. And sometimes that favorite can shift between kids, depending on their age and depending on what they do. It's just like anything else. You have a couple of friends. You like one friend more than another friend, and sometimes for various reasons. If you're the manager of two departments, chances are you like one department better than the other department. And again, they're for different reasons. So I knew this about him. He liked the intensive care unit better than the telemetry unit, and here's what was happening. When he was rounding, Oh, I got to go round when my telemetry unit because that's what he's supposed to do, but he loved hanging out in the ICU. And I was with him the one time; I'm like, Oh, I want to come with you because I want to meet the people in the telemetry department. So when he's rounding on the telemetry department, he had his cell phone in his hand, and he's talking to people while he's answering emails. So he's looking down on his phone, then looking up at people. Huh, huh. So what did that tell the people in telemetry? He doesn't care about us. He's checking a checkbox. He has to come over, okay? And he has to round, but he doesn't want to be here. He only spent time when he had to be there, and it was for the rounding. It was for checking on various things. But when he was there, he really wasn't there. So that's how it showed up. His wobble was empathy because his team didn't believe he really cared about them. There's another leader I worked with. She was very frustrated as a leader. We were doing some consulting work. It was my first call with her, first call with her to find out a little bit more about her and her department. She cried. She said, My staff hate me. I walk into the break room. They walk out. They never invite me to anything. Something will happen in the department, they won't tell me. They'll file an anonymous complaint with like, corporate compliance. I know you're starting to do work with us, but I'm looking for another job. I got to know her and I asked her a series of questions on that first call. But on that first call, I knew that her trust wobble was logic, because she so desperately wanted to be liked by her team, that she made promises she couldn't keep. They did not trust her decision-making, okay? They did not trust her judgment. She was not consistent in what she did. And so she made all these promises that she couldn't keep. So instead of building the relationship and showing them, Hey, I'm one of you, they pulled away and disconnected from her because they lost trust in her as their leader. And then authenticity: do they believe they're dealing with the real you? I see this a lot with new leaders who believe that they need to approach their role as very competent and confident and authoritarian, even though that doesn't really work anymore. And what happens is, because I was working with this one leader, she was a new leader, and she was a completely different person in her office, as she was when she was out in the department. When she was in the department, she stood tall, okay? And she was not, she was too stiff. She was all about, Did you do this? Did you do that? She was another checkbox type of person. But then she'd go into her office, and again, she would be a completely different person. I'm like, whoa, whoa, what just happened here? Like invasion of the Body Snatchers. And it's because she thought that she needed to come across that way. Working with her, what I helped her to see was that people want to see the real you. Good, bad, and occasionally, it's okay to let out your ugly. Okay, so what do you do? What do you do? Let's go back to this manager who was in the intensive care unit, who had the child in telemetry. I worked with him and I said, All right, here's the deal. When you're rounding in the telemetry department, put your phone away. Put it in your pocket. Shut off your notifications. There's a phrase that I like to share, and it's a phrase that I remind myself too, and that is to be where your feet are. If your feet, you're talking to someone in your department, maybe it's during the bookends, okay, or during a huddle, okay, be where your feet are. Be present in that moment. And then, okay, if, even if you're watching this on video, I can't really show you this, but I do a whole communication workshop and we talk about body language, and I actually share this with people and I demonstrate it. If you're talking to someone and you're face to face and you're both standing, if you're engaged in the conversation, your feet are facing that person both feet. As soon as you're like, okay, I'm done with this conversation, one of your feet will turn to the side. Now, if you're astute and you're paying attention to other people's body language, pay attention to this. You start out feet to feet. As soon as that other person turns their foot to the side, wrap it up because they're done talking to you. All right. I actually caught myself doing this. I'm a morning person this morning. I got up at 4:00 in the morning, my brain wide awake. All the things I have to do today. But don't text me or expect me to hop on a call with you after 9:00 because I'm out. I don't do very well speaking in the evening, and there have been occasions where I've had to do an evening event, so I was, I did an evening event; I think I finished at 8:00, and as I walked out. So I was the speaker, okay? And a lot of times people want to come up to me after, Oh my gosh! And they want to tell me their stories and want to ask for advice, and it's great, and they praised me, and it's, it fills my cup, makes me feel good, okay? And I feel I helped someone. However, I get to the point where I'm like, Oh my God, please stop talking to me because I am so tired. I just want to go home and go to bed. And that's what happened this night. I was talking to this woman after the event and she was like, Oh my God, this was so fantastic. You had so many tips. And she kept talking, and my feet were facing her. And then as she kept talking, my, one of my feet turned to the left. I guess that would be my left foot. And then here's what happened. Then I took a step back with my other foot. And then I turned and I kept stepping back. Oh my gosh, I didn't even realize I was doing it, but that's a sign that someone has disengaged from the conversation. Okay, so that's your little, I think, bonus tip: start paying attention to where people's feet are. But getting back to my point, when you're interacting with someone on your team, face them, okay? If they're in your office, minimize your email. That's probably on your screen right now on your computer. Minimize everything so you have no distractions. Face that person. Be where your feet are. Because if empathy is your trust wobble, this one is actually easy to fix. Except, okay, this is all about do your people believe that you care about them? I'm making an assumption that you do, because if you don't care about your team, maybe being in a leadership role isn't the best fit for you. Okay, no judgment here, but if you take a step back and say, Yeah, I really don't care about my team, then this isn't the right fit for you. Go find something else to do. I'm just telling you. All right. Logic. If logic is your wobble, here are some things you can do. Start thinking through your options before you make a decision, okay? So I'll just tell you logic is my trust wobble. I am what they consider a quick start. So I've done the Colby. I'm a quick start. I'm an Enneagram three. So I am your classic visionary entrepreneur. I get all excited, new shiny objects, and I immediately want to start implementing things. So I just came back from a conference and my husband said to the team, Brace yourselves, Renee's coming back, okay? And she has 57 things that she wants to do. I love it, I get excited about it, but then I realize, I'm not always making the best decisions because I don't think them through. And then what I do is I change my mind. I'm like, Oh, we're going to start doing this, and we start doing it. And then I'm like, Yeah, that's not really working that way. And I didn't really think it through. So then I stop. So I'm inconsistent. I know this about myself and I'm working on it. And here's what you can do. If logic is your trust wobble, especially if you make quick decisions. It's funny. It's to the point where somebody's asking me a question and I immediately want to respond and my team will say back to me, Do you need to think about this, Renee? So I've actually built into this as a response. Okay. All right. I need some thinking time. And then how about I get back to you on that? Okay? So don't make promises you can't keep. Okay. Know your limitations. Figure out what you're really good at. Like, how do you add value as a leader in your department or in your organization and focus on that and let people know. I'm a really good speaker. So when I was before I even started my own company, if somebody needed someone to speak, that was me. They would say, Renee, we need you to speak. Okay, no problem. And when I was working as a bedside nurse, I was really good at drawing blood gases. This was back in the day when nurses would draw their own blood gases. We wouldn't ask respiratory. So somebody needed a blood gas drawn? Boom. That was me. Know what you're really good at. Make sure your team knows that you're good at that, too, okay? And then authenticity. It's okay to say that you don't know everything. It's okay to admit that you've made a mistake. Your people actually want you to do that. I think I'm actually well known for, people always say, Oh, you're so real. You tell us all the mistakes that you've made. Yeah, because I'm hoping that by telling you you won't make the same mistakes too. But as the leader, you don't have to be perfect. And when you pretend to be perfect, you create this disconnect between yourself and your team because nobody's perfect. Now, I'm not asking you or suggesting that you fillet yourself open and say, Okay, here's all my bad stuff, okay? I just want you to know I'm terrible at this. I'm not good at that. That's not what I'm suggesting. But when I'm telling you is it's okay for you to tell people I'm really good at this, but I'm not so good at that, and I'm working on it. This comes up a lot when we talk to other employees about nitpicky nurse, or somebody who comes across sometimes as little abrasive and they don't really mean anything by it. What do you do? Let's say you come across as a micromanager because sometimes I think I dip into that. It's okay for you to say sometimes I can come off as a little micromanaging. It's not my intent. But if I do, please tell me, because it's something that I recognize that I do sometimes, especially when I'm under stress. So I want you to call me on it if that happens. Call me on it if I get nitpicky. Call me on it if I get a little intense or abrasive. So it's you getting to know yourself first and letting your team know that, Hey, this: I'm solid. I can do that. This: not so much, but I'm working on it. The other thing with authenticity is trying to make sure that if you do make a mistake or you make a decision that in retrospect wasn't a good decision, tell them. I, two weeks ago. I said we were going to do this, and this was a decision that I made. And then I realized it wasn't the best decision. Did you recognize that wasn't a good decision? Okay. Me too. So here's what I'm going to do to either rectify that or how we're going to move forward from that. So it's okay. And again, it's okay to say, I don't know. I still have a hard time saying I don't know when I'm doing any type of presentation, I'm working with a client or even when I'm doing a lot of live calls. And I'm like, Okay, Q&A, ask me anything. I've prided myself on saying there is not one question somebody could ask me that I don't know the answer to. And I thought, why do I say that? Because guess what? I'm sure there's a question that I don't know how to answer. I mean, I'm like, I can answer any question. I'm like, come on, you're not superhuman a lot. I recognize, I don't know everything. So let people know that I'm going to do the best that I can. There's just some questions that are not easy to answer, and that's usually my challenge. Especially if I'm doing a live webinar and we have ten minutes, somebody will ask me a question, and I'm thinking, okay, that's an hour that I could be answering this question. How do I do so in a way that's clear and concise? All right. We're going to wrap things up. Let's go back. Let's do a recap. We talked about trust and how important it is. Everything begins with trust, speed of trust. I'm going to put the link to the Harvard Business Review article. You'll read it. You'll know why I love it. The link to Stephen Covey's Speed of Trust. Actually, I think I want to read it. Do you ever have those books that you read and you're like, I can read that book over and over again? That's one of them for me. But it's been a while, so I think I'm going to have to reread it. So we talked about why trust is so important. We also talked about the three dimensions of trust, building that relationship, think about the bookends. We talked about consistency. If you're going to add healthy workforce as a standing agenda item, make sure you do it at every meeting because as soon as you take it off, you lose trust. And now you've made healthy workforce another flavor of the month. And then competence, okay? What are you competent in? What are you not competent in? Don't make promises and things that you don't have competence or control over, okay? And then we talked about the trust wobble. So it's either empathy. Does your team believe that you care about them? Is it logic? Do they trust your decision-making? Or is it authenticity? Do they believe that they're dealing with the real you? Read the article, figure out what your trust wobble is, and then do something to work on it. We all have something we need to work on. I hope that helped you today. I was thinking, okay, what am I going to talk about today? I have probably 150 different things, but this one keeps popping up and I'm actually, I'm speaking at a conference coming up, and part of my talk is on building trust from the perspective of a healthy work culture. And so I wanted to share some of this with you today. I want to thank you so much for being here. I know you're a busy people, but the fact that you took out time out of your day and maybe you're in your car listening to this as a podcast or you're eating lunch, or this is when I listen to podcasts. I listen to them when I'm getting ready in the morning. I'm just really thankful that you're here. I'm grateful that you gave up some of your time to spend with me. And if you like this podcast, if you could rate it, post a review. We have a campaign right now. We're trying to get to 50 reviews, okay? We only have a few right now. People say all the time, Oh my God, I love your podcast. Please write a review. And my daughter, Courtney, okay. She's our digital content specialist. So I put this on her to, I said, Court, this is going to be your campaign by the end of the year: 50 reviews. And she said she's going to tell everybody that she'll get in trouble with her mom if she doesn't reach that goal. So help Courtney out so she doesn't get in big trouble and get put on time out from her mother, okay? So, post a review and share it with another leader who might need to hear this today. I want to thank you for everything that you do to help cultivate and sustain a healthy work culture in your organization. Thanks, everyone. Take care.

Renee Thompson:
Thank you for listening to Coffee Break: Breaking the Cycle of Bullying in Healthcare – One Cup at a Time. If you found this podcast helpful, we invite you to click the Subscribe button and tune in every week. For more information about our show and how we work with healthcare organizations to cultivate and sustain a healthy work culture free from bullying and incivility, visit us at HealthyWorkforceInstitute.com. Until our next cup of coffee, be kind, take care, and stay connected.

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