Why do leaders get it so wrong sometimes? Why do policies created with best of intentions meet with resistance? Why does it seem like leaders and their employees speak different languages?
The answer: employees don’t trust their leaders and they don’t feel safe. In this environment, no shared meaning can occur. The chasm of understanding is too far to cross.
Consider a senior leader announcing a new policy: a change to the L&D budget. Does this leader think she’s doing the right thing? Yes. Have she thought through the implications? Yes. Are the changes met with distrust and dissent by employees? Unfortunately, yes.
Here’s what happens next. The explanation rings hollow to employees. The policy is met with suspicion. Hours are lost — and much emotional energy is spent — on unending clarifications. No-one is happy. Employees and leaders hear the same words and read the same documents. But the meaning they make is very different.
What happened? There was an absence of trust and of safety. There could be no shared meaning.
Into every relationship we bring so much that is unique and unseen. We bring our values, beliefs, fears, and more. With all this difference, how can we hope to connect?
The answer is for leaders to build trust and safety. Trust means believing the other person has your best interests at heart. Safety means being to able to share more of yourself and your thoughts. Together, trust and safety create a space for shared meaning to emerge.
I’ve failed as a leader exactly because I hadn’t created trust and safety.
I’d started leading a new team. The team was performing well, but there were some challenges in how they were working. The current structure wasn’t sustainable in the long-run.
Less than twelve months ago, in the same company, I’d seen a similar situation. At that time, I implemented a change to strong team buy-in and positive results.
But when I pitched the change to this team, it landed like a lead balloon, weighed down by a collective air of skepticism and mistrust. My team distrusted my intentions, my reasoning, and my conclusion. And why wouldn’t they? They were a tight-knit community; I was an outsider.
What I could have done differently was build that trust and safety first. And I may have come to a different conclusion about what to do. Shared meaning isn’t a leader imposing their view on others. Nor is it a compromise. It’s “us vs. the problem”, where both groups share an understanding of not only “us” and “the problem”, but also of what to do about it.
Next time you find your words not landing, consider if you’ve invested in the relationship. Once you create trust and build safety, the dialogue can begin.