If you hire someone to do a job for you, you are telling them that you trust them. You trust them to get the work done, you trust them to do a good job, and you trust them to make the best decisions possible.
Yet in schools there seems to be a breakdown in trust between administration and teachers. When admin does not trust the teachers they have hired, teachers don’t feel like they are in charge of their own careers. Building this trust and having teachers feel that they are in charge of their own career is important because if you don’t, teachers will micromanage themselves and end up going to you for every single decision they make or worse they will not do anything out of fear of failing. This leads to teachers not being empowered to be leaders within your organization which ultimately causes negative feelings for both the employee and leader.
As a leader it can be hard to let go and trust your employees. What if they mess up? What if they don’t do things to my liking? Failure and misalignment will happen. It’s inevitable. When it does happen it’s important to note chastise someone for their actions. Chastising someone for their actions will make them feel like you don’t trust them and once that trust is lost, it is very hard to work together.
I would suggest that when these failures and misalignments happen that you should take an empathetic approach and learn about why they made their choice. Doing this will not only help keep a relationship between you and the team you lead, it will also help you better understand where your team is coming form and what areas of improvement you need to focus on. By identifying these areas of improvement I believe that you can continue to build a trusting relationship with the team you lead which ultimately will lead to progress towards meeting your final goals.
