What to do with an employee you do not trust?

TRUST is the essence of an healthy relationship between you and your employees

Without TRUST we entertain doubts and are often reluctant to delegate. 

When we have serious doubts on the integrity of a team member, we need to address the situation. A lack of trust can certainly lead to failure and can cause a certain stress to all team members.

Did you ever have an employee that you just could not trust? There was this gut feeling inside of you questioning you about your employees intentions? How did you address it?

It certainly DID happen to me. This was probably one of the worst situation to manage for me. Let me share with you the context and what I have done to fix the issue. I hope that you can apply some tips and ideas immediately to your situation. After all, we all want to have a motivated team with great spirit, we want the best for them and we just can't let it go when we have an employee that can potentially jeopardize the peace of our group.

Many years ago, I nominated a resource to a management position (mistake #1). It certainly was not the best move I've made but hey, it's part of my learning process. This individual was very smart and was a great performer. Over a period of only 4 to 8 weeks after his promotion to a management position, the team's motivation of my whole group went down the toilet. Mind you, this promotion did not get out of a hat, it was wanted and I had the buy-in from my troup. But after a while, people would come to work with long faces and would not tackle issues with the same enthusiasm. I got REALLY worried!

8 Strikes in 4-8 weeks:

• The manager talked negatively about some of his own team members while those individuals were not there (strike 1)
• The manager talked negatively about our company in front of the client! (strike 2)
• The manager reprimanded pretty badly his own resources in front of clients or other team members (strike 3)
• The manager was very talkative and never seemed to listen what other people had to say, he was frequently conducting monologues (strike 4)
• The manager encouraged rumors internally (strike 5)
• The manager seemed happy to talk to everyone at all time but people started to not pay attention to this manager as it did not look sincere (strike 6)
• The manager imposed many decisions to clients and resources without taking the input of resources, this increased the frustration internally and was understood by many people as being a lack of trust towards them (strike 7)
• The manager was not respectful towards contractuals and really did not value there input and value, consultants were his enemies and needed to act within a certain frame. The reality of our business is that the consultants are extremely precious because they bring knowledge and know-how that the company does not have... (Strike 8)



Result: he completely lost his credibility and very few people wanted to work with him because no one would TRUST HIM!!!


At the end of the day, after a couple of weeks in that role I really started to put the pieces together and started to be extremely worried about his approach and is lack of CARE and RESPECT for others. TRUST comes from knowing that the individual is loyal and has a high sense of integrity. He has proven the exact opposite.

Knowing that he was new in a management role, I quickly started to coach him and to address those points in order to try to bring him where he needed to be. I was very frank and transparent with him and reported the events without saying specially where it came from. I also recommended some correction actions for each point and future behavior to adapt.
To be honest, it turned out that the situation DEGRATED as he continued to drag himself down. Of course the manager felt pointed and felt that he could not continue his POWERTRIP anymore. It was clearly a power trip, it was something to see! the worst part is that he truly thought that he was doing good and that everyone was respecting him. I do not get this and it was truly sad to see. I really seen the potential in this individual and he was just wasting all his talents on a power trip.
So, then, You know what he started to do???? He started to reprimand even more the resources and threaten them if they would talk to anyone but him! IT HAD TO STOP.
I reassigned the manager elsewhere, where he could like before brig high value to the organization without creating all those problems. Who's fault was it? To be honnest, I think that I had a big part of responsibilities in that. I am the one that triggered this somehow by assigning the wrong resource in the wrong position. He has his part too but we are totally both responsible. This was such a good lesson for me.
TIPS:
- Always put trusted people in your circle of direct reports.
- Work with HR early in the process, involve them, do a performance plan if needed
- Be very clear with the individual when situation arise, do not let things go
- Protect your team, open the discussion with them, do not leave them alone
- Lead by example, build trust in people and avoid working with untrusty resources
- be yourself, be transparent