Regaining Trust

When I accepted a new position a little over two years ago, a few things happened that inadvertantly eroded some trust between me and one of my directly reporting employees. While the management position I now occupied had been vacant, this professional level employee took the position on an interim basis. Additionally, she and the previous manager had gotten along very well and had a personal friendship.

I came in and while we got along well, during the first six months or so on the job I found several compliance issues had been neglected by my predecessor - and presumably by this professional level employee as well. When I asked her about the history of the neglected, yet required programs, she was understandably embarassed not to have been aware of the compliance requirements.

I did not blame her for the shortcomings, because she did not know about them. However, I also took it upon myself to develop and implement the solutions to the problems, without involving this employee. I'm sure she felt marginalized, however I had become so absorbed in the problem-solving and the tasks of putting the new programs in place, that I was thoughtless in not noticing her feelings.

She retreated to lower level functional activities that did not require a lot of judgment, analysis or risk-taking. I encouraged her with my words to take more risks, engage in creative and innovative actions, and my words told her she was empowered to move forward. However, the marginalizing actions of my first year on the job spoke louder to her than my words.

Lately I've been giving some thought to how to regain the trust with this employee and how to once again let her know I believe in her professional judgement and want her to become engaged in the work again. I'd love to hear your words of advice or stories of similar situations and how you were able to repair them and once again provide motivation to your top talent.

Email me at sandra@skysthelimit-hr.com with your thoughts - or simply comment right here!

Cheers,
Sandra