Organisational leaders must value employees and treat them fairly. Studies have shown that valuing employees gives them confidence and commitment, and increases their respect for their leaders.
Employees feel appreciated through various forms of motivation, producing excellent results. Feeling valued brings out positive emotions with increased commitment in the workplace.
So, leaders need to find multiple ways of making employees feel valued. It is important for organisational leaders not to hire people they cannot trust. It is also important to know that people value those they trust, knowing they will be up to the task given to them.
If managers and leaders do not trust their team members, they have no business working with them. No leader is also comfortable with people they do not trust.
This discomfort causes leaders not to motivate and invest in such employees, and this also results in not giving team members opportunities to grow. It ends up with leaders not valuing these people.
If managers and leaders do not trust their team members, they have no business working with them. No leader is also comfortable with people they do not trust
The result is an opposite action where such employees lose trust in their leaders and start looking for ways to exit.
Below are ways leaders can make their team members feel valued: Be empathetic; Care about employee wellbeing; Acknowledge their efforts; Reward their accomplishments; Make their opinion matter; Create opportunities for growth, and Trust your team members.
It is pertinent to note that organisational leaders cannot treat every employee equally, but they can treat everyone fairly. Let us look at this scenario.
The team leader has Abel and Ruth reporting to him. Abel always completes the tasks assigned to him at the office. He does not spare extra time to do any duty outside working hours.
This is smart of Abel because he can do his tasks at work even though he is not willing to go above and beyond.
However, Abel’s teammate Ruth goes above and above to support the team in achieving its goals. Their leader is moved to praise Ruth for her sacrifices.
When Abel and Ruth get sick, their manager visits them, sees them, inquires about how they are doing, continues encouraging them, and provide support.
The catch here is that when the two employees were sick, their manager treated them fairly by visiting them and giving support, but the team leader did not treat them the same.
He sacrificed his sleep to see Ruth at the hospital at 3am when he could wait until sunrise because Ruth goes the extra mile in commitment even outside working hours to make sure the team accomplishes its goal, which experts may see as unintended bias.
Leaders need to treat their employees fairly, according to the policies and culture of the organisation, even though leaders can do extra for their employees with preference given to employee commitment.
Trust thrives in an environment of fairness. Indeed, it is evident that trust blooms on the soil of justice.
Sometimes, organisational leaders are quick to tell their employees the organisation’s challenges, especially when they realise the team must be informed to lower their high expectations from leadership and to prompt employees to do more to achieve organisational goals.
This move is perfect because it allows employees to be patient and do more to overcome those challenges and achieve goals.
As much as leaders love to share organisational challenges with employees, they also communicate the organisation’s successes to the employees.
Most of the time, some leaders fail to communicate successes for fear of employees increasing their expectations from management.
Employees will always know, in one way or the other, the successes and achievements of the organisation. If leaders fail to communicate it officially, they feel management is trying to hide or deprive them of the labourer’s share of the achievement.
This causes the foundations of trust for their leaders to shake, and respect starts to diminish. Respect is the fruit of trust.
Organisational leaders must be reliable and encourage participative management. Hence, organisations that want to achieve reliability in leadership must have a fair and just culture coupled with teamwork and training.
Every leader must have values on which their integrity is built. When a leader builds strong integrity, he becomes reliable based on the values of his integrity. Reliability is a value and capability of being trusted and depended on.
A leader who builds integrity of incorruptibility through keeping various values has other people testify to their virtue of integrity by factual evidence that the leader cannot indulge in any form of corruption.
Read also: How to get your people to trust your leadership
The team can trust you to be reliable when you trust every member’s judgment knowing that every member has something positive to contribute to the team’s agenda.
Train and resource tour team members enough to trust their judgement so they can feel valuable to the team. Delegate as a leader, give the team members the needed resources, give them the freedom of judgement, and trust them to deliver. Employees trust leaders who rely on them.
Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Group, stated that, “take care of your employees, and they will take care of your business”, which translates to taking care of your employees because you trust them.
The investment you are making into their career and capacities, and they will appreciate that trust of investing in them. They pay back by injecting positive emotions into their tasks and duties to attain individual, team and organisational vision.
Other leaders and organisations who have turned a ‘blind eye’ to building trust in leadership have seen low enthusiasm, negative emotion, and a high rate of employee turnover in their organisations.
A dependable leader who is transparent, communicates effectively, values and treats team members fairly and respects their opinions earns the trust of his team members.
The inability of a leader to trust his team will eventually lead to micromanagement. Micromanagement is a fruit of mistrust.
