Not everyone reacts the same way to feeling trusted by a manager. For some, it is a compliment, while for others, it is a burden leading to less engagement, lower performance, and more conflict at home. New research in the Journal of Management Studies explains what makes some employees have positive versus negative reactions to feeling trusted and what managers can do to help. 

Feeling trusted  

Trusting someone is not the same as feeling trusted. Felt trust is the extent to which individuals believe that they are trusted by someone else. For instance, employees can feel trusted by managers who delegate important tasks, ask for critical input, or invite employees to extend themselves. For years, research has shown that feeling trusted at work leads to benefits, but a few recent studies have examined the dark side of felt trust, namely that it can backfire and lead to unwanted consequences. Our study explores how both of these can be true at the same time and suggests that it depends on how employees view themselves at work. 

The key role of organization-based self-esteem 

The key factor determining who shines and who struggles when feeling trusted is organization-based self-esteem (OBSE), or how employees view themselves as worthwhile, useful, and valuable members of their organization.  

Employees have a general sense of their own confidence in their abilities at work, and this serves as a lens through which they interpret ongoing social signals, including those from their manager.  

Self-confident employees see trust as a compliment 

• When a manager signals, “I trust you,” those with a lot of self-confidence (i.e., high OBSE) foresee an enjoyable opportunity to demonstrate their abilities and affirm their positive self-view.  

Less confident employees feel burdened by trust 

• When employees without a lot of self-confidence (i.e., low OBSE) receive a signal of trust, they feel an unwelcome demand reminding them of their shortcomings. They anticipate not enjoying the bestowal of trust and expect negative outcomes, including possible embarrassment.  

Two studies: U.S. and China 

To better understand what happens when employees feel trusted by their managers and how this may be different for those with a lot of self-confidence at work versus those without it, we conducted two studies, one in the U.S. and another in China. We examined how feeling trusted by a manager impacts employees at work (i.e., task performance) and at home (i.e., the spillover of work conflict to the home). 

First, we investigated how feeling trusted interacts with employees’ OBSE to impact work engagement. In the U.S., about 500 employees at a nonprofit organization completed two online surveys six weeks apart, reporting how much they felt trusted, their OBSE, and their work engagement. 

Second, we extended our first study to also include how work and home outcomes are influenced. In China, about 300 employees and their managers in three industries (IT, finance, and health) completed paper surveys in three rounds over several weeks. Employees answered questions about felt trust, OBSE, work engagement, and work-to-home conflict. Managers rated employee performance. 

Main research takeaways 

The analyses of the data from the U.S. and China confirmed our three main predictions. 

Feeling trusted is not always helpful 

• Its impact depends on how confident employees feel about their value at work (i.e., their OBSE). When employees feel trusted and confident, they become more engaged. When they feel trusted and unsure of their worth, engagement drops. 

Felt trust can make some employees shine and others struggle at work 

• Confident employees who feel trusted shine because they are more engaged at work and thus perform better. In contrast, when less confident employees feel trusted, they struggle, becoming less engaged and performing worse. 

Felt trust impacts home life too 

• When feeling trusted, confident employees become more engaged at work and bring fewer work-related conflicts home. However, employees with low confidence who feel trusted become less engaged and bring more work-related conflict home. 

How managers can help 

To get the most benefit from trust, managers need to be intentional when they hand off a critical task signaling “I trust you” with a smile. They can do the following: 

• Get to genuinely know employees. Learn how valued they feel at the organization. 

• Acknowledge that trust is not universally helpful. It should be bestowed with intention. 

• Be cautious with low OBSE employees. Know that bestowing trust on them can be risky not only for their work (i.e., lower performance), but their home life as well (i.e., more spillover of work conflict to the home). 

• Communicate trust clearly. Trusting, communicating trust, and the recipient feeling trusted are three different things. 

• Watch employees’ reactions. Those who do not respond well to the bestowal of trust may need extra encouragement and a reminder that their contributions matter. 

• Build confidence. Help all employees, especially ones with low OBSE, feel valued as this has a myriad of benefits.