Scrutinized: Dealing With Distrust

What do you do when...you find yourself confronted with a paramedic who questions everything you say? You can’t remember ever doing anything that warrants this person’s distrust, yet it seems as though you have no credibility with her.

That’s not a comfortable feeling, but there’s always a reason for it. It’s about as important all by itself as an isolated finding in a physical exam. Could be the tip of an iceberg, like the tiny wound an ice pick leaves over the site of a collapsed lung. Or, it may have nothing to do with you at all.

The root of your problem may be as simple to deduce as a paramedic with a people problem. But don’t go straight there.

Remember that paramedics are disciplined to question things—even things they plainly see and hear. They also get lied to for a living, way more often than people deny their own chest pain. One of the first things a young paramedic learns is that lying is how lots of people deal with crisis. The best paramedics have learned that lesson well.

Take some other “vital signs.” Do your other crews seem to treat you with respect? That’s probably the topic of another article, but for now some easy ways to assess the respect of your people are as follows: Do they ask for your advice about things that are important to them? Do they confide in you, especially when they’re off the clock and could just go home? And most of all, do they refer other people to you for the same things? Those are all marks of respect from field crews.

If this paramedic treats you differently than the rest of your people generally do, you can focus externally on the individual. But if you get a sense that you have a more general problem with credibility, look inward instead. As a leader, you need to question yourself daily (and many times daily). Credibility is not something you command; it’s an award that other people give you. (Some of us probably deserve it without receiving it.) And although you need to work throughout your life to earn it, you can lose it in a single moment.

Being a good leader presupposes talent, just like being a good caregiver. But the mark of a leader is not just talent, and it’s more than a fine education. It’s the fact that wherever you go, people naturally trust you enough to follow you. You should always see that as an honor, not an entitlement.

If your sense of uneasiness seems to be limited to this individual paramedic, the solution is as easy as spending time with her. You can do that over coffee if you like (away from your office). Or ride with her. There’s no better way to learn about a caregiver than to watch them work. And there’s no greater opportunity for a caregiver to learn about a leader than on their own turf, in the confines of their own ambulance.

That’s more than a strategy; it’s a statement that no trained observer could misunderstand. It says I’m real, I’m here to prove it, and your respect is worth my time.

Hard to ignore a statement like that, wouldn’t you say?