It’s important to remember that a lack of building trust can endanger your leadership.
According to the “Cambridge Dictionary”, trust is defined as…
“believing that someone is good and honest and will not harm you…or that someone or something is safe and reliable.”
Cambridge Dictionary
In other words…if people or teams in your school district feel that they can’t trust your leadership, your school district might suffer.
A lack of trust can make your district seem “less productive” and damage your “employee engagement”, resulting in “lower performance”.
The lack of trust could also make your leadership impact less effective.
Why Building Trust Is Critical
When it comes to “leading organizations,” building trust is the fuel that feeds an organization’s culture and morale.
Trust is the critical element that everyone in the organization cares about.
Like oxygen…when you have trust…
Things are great…
But when you don’t…
Things need to change real fast!
Why A Lack of Building Trust Is Detrimental To Your School District?
There are many reasons why a lack of trust can cause a ripple effect in your district.
Lack of Building Trust Waste Time
When a school or district lacks trust, your organizational performance can grind to a screeching halt.
Imagine this…
You’re the principal of a school with a large staff. Your math department chair is trying to develop a robust Professional Learning Community (PLC) to improve its collaboration and instruction.
The department asks the Assistant Principal to support the work and secure meeting space and materials for the math team.
But on the day of the meeting…
The math team arrives with no room and no materials for the meeting. The Assistant Principal failed to follow through on the commitment made to the math department.
Because of the failure to follow up and keep commitments, your math department has lost trust in the Assistant Principal.
Lack of Trust Prevents You From Getting the Best Results
In addition to wasting time and resources, broken trust prevents you from getting killer results.
Your school community expects the school to provide a solid educational experience for the scholars…
It is why schools exist.
That’s why it is so important to focus on and maintain building trust. If your school is seen as untrustworthy…
Your school climate…
Your school morale…
Will suffer.
Lack of trust can also create missed opportunities…
For example, let’s say you are very interested in hosting some staff appreciation activities. Your team pours a lot of time, energy, and effort into planning activities focused on recognizing staff for their hard work.
Then the day of the event…
There’s a lack of engagement and participation from your faculty and staff. The idea was great, and the intent behind it was good, but the team stayed away.
What’s the deal?
Turns out that due to a lack of trust, your staff was skeptical or suspicious of your real intent. After all, they are your team, and they see you and your leadership action every day.
Once again, a lack of trust impacts your school and your leadership influence.
How To Tell If Your School Has a Trust Problem
By now, you should be pretty convinced that a lack of trust in your school or district is not a good thing.
It’s something that can hurt your leadership and overall performance.
When you are “leading from the front” day in and day out, it can be hard to take a step back and think about what’s going on at the macro-level of your school or district…
And if you are making the higher-level decisions, you may not know what your team members are experiencing.
If you’re worried about a lack of trust, take a look to see if you notice any of these things:
Your Leadership Team Members Aren’t Actively Engaged
Have you noticed that your leaders only interact with a small percentage of your overall team?
Or, maybe they only have surface-level interactions with your front line workers…
Or, perhaps they have only had interactions when there is a need for performance feedback…
Or worse…
Employee discipline…
This is not the best way to focus on your team’s strengths, build trust, and authentic engagement in your school.
If this is something you’ve seen in your school or district, a lack of trust-building might be an issue for your organization.
Your Leadership Team Doesn’t Understand What Your Front Line Team Members Need To Be Successful
Another way to see if your leadership team is struggling with building trust is to ask your leaders how they offer support to the front line team.
Ask your leaders what the clerical team needs to be successful. See if your leaders are checking in with the team to see what challenges they are facing. Probe to see the last time one of your leaders sent a gratitude message to the team or an individual on the team for their hard work.
If the answer your leaders keep giving you is, “I don’t know…”
There’s your sign you may have a trust issue in your school.
How To Start Building Trust Right Now
Let’s say you recognize that your school has a trust issue. What are you (as the leader) supposed to do about it?
You have to take action to deal with trust issues in your school.
When creating a plan to tackle building trust, the first thing you want to do is have a frank conversation with your leadership team.
Lack of trust often starts at the leadership level in schools and districts…
If your leadership team is not aware of the trust issues…
It is time to have the uncomfortable conversation…
As leaders, we are directly responsible for creating an environment where trust can grow…
As leaders, we are directly responsible for creating an environment where trust can be restored if broken…
As leaders, we are directly responsible for creating an environment where we extend trust to the people we serve.
If your leaders aren’t creating a trusting environment, you should call a meeting with them to brainstorm new ways to do things better.
Here is a suggestion of things you can do to focus on building trust in your school/district.
Have a Trust Building Master Plan
Having one central trust-building plan that is widely known and understood is essential for your school. If you don’t have one already, that’s a level one priority for you and your team.
If you have been running your school in a “throw things at the wall and see what sticks” type of way, it is time to right the ship and get serious about your trust-building strategy.
What does this mean? Well, first, you must remember that building trust is a learnable skill and can improve your leadership and the performance of your organization.
Next, you need to focus on building up your leadership team. Helping your leaders understand that self-trust is the first step to leading others better is critical to their success.
Don’t rush this process, though. Your leaders will need to go through their process of reflection and self-discovery. But when they “get it,” it can be a game-changer for your team and organization.
Once your team has explored self-trust individually, you can work with them to build a comprehensive plan to begin building a trusting relationship with the rest of your staff.
You will want to clearly define your main goals and objectives to ensure that the team is making constant progress. Be sure to make it clear to the team that building trust is a critical priority for the organization’s success.
Identify and Deal With Organization Culture Problems
If you’ve built your plan, but you still can’t figure out why you building trust is an issue…
It is clear that you have a culture issue.
Maybe one of your leaders has a history of losing their temper and creates fear and anxiety in members of your team. Everyone tries to avoid the manager, so trust is never able to develop.
Or maybe there is a history of favoritism, and the team is upset because of the ongoing issue. Since the team feels that only a select group of people get special treatment, they have opted out of building strong working and personal relationships in the organization.
As a leader committed to building trust, once you recognize and root out these issues, you can move forward with shifting to a more positive culture.
Follow Through Over Time
No matter what you choose to do to deal with building and developing trust, the most important thing is that you stick to it and follow through.
One of the worst things you can do is go on a “building trust crusade” for a month or two and then forget about it, letting things drift back to the status quo. Make sure your commitment and focus on building trust is permanent.
Conclusion
A lack of trust is one of the main things that can severely impact your leadership and sabotage your school district’s performance. Thankfully, once you realize that your school district has a trust problem, you can take the steps to build a plan and deal with the issue.
Your team will feel relieved that you recognize the issue and that you are taking the initiative to address it. They know they will benefit from increased trust within and throughout the organization.
Did I miss any ways to deal with trust issues within an organization? Let me know in the comments.
