As the old song says, “People are people where ever they are.” Seems the Good Lord wired the vast majority of folks with a fairly keen sense of right and wrong, along with an innate ability to tell when they’ve been lied to by others.

Your workforce is no different. Employees will figure out who to trust really fast. They know when somebody is being sincere or if they are just feeding them a line. That is why the number one rule in labor relations is “DON’T LIE”. Always tell the truth.

A big mistake many managers make, however, is to adopt the line from the Jack Nicholas, Tom Cruse movie “YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!” Leaders sometime think that employees can’t deal with reality or that they will make bad assumptions so they tell them something different than the truth. Big mistake.

The manager that does this doesn’t think of it as a lie or manipulative but their employees do and their perception is reality. The leader who gets tagged as somebody that can’t be trusted will struggle working with the team from that point on.

Along with telling the truth, supervisors and managers have to be sincere. They have to say what they mean and mean what they say. It is a leaders ability to convey sincerity that determines their ability to inspire and lead their team. Often young managers will “rally” the troops around working hard to hit a number for the good of the cause but their delivery is so insincere that the team walks away jaded and resentful. The response is often a skeptical workforces who ends up wasting time speculating about what is really going on, as opposed to focusing on the task at hand.

Once an employee begins to question your motives, they start losing trust in what you do and say. There are a few rules to remember to avoid losing the trust of your team:

  1. Treat people like you would want to be treated
  2. Never lie to your team
  3. Be sincere in all your dealings with people that you supervise
  4. Treat your people like adults
  5. Your actions will speak louder than your words so walk the talk at all times

If your leadership team lives by these five guidelines, you will have an organization that is built on trust and communicates in a healthy manner.  This doesn’t mean everyone will always agree or that you will never have conflicts.  You will.  These tough issues, however, will be much easier to deal with if your people trust what you are saying and believe that you really do care.

Always, sincerely, tell the truth.