A CEO went viral with a list of things he's 'sick' of hearing from his employees — and he has a point

• A CEO's post on workplace trust sparked debate on X.
• He advocated for employee trust and autonomy over micromanagement.

A CEO caused a stir on X with a post about the workplace culture he promotes.

Rob Dance, who's the founder of Rock, one of the UK's largest IT consultancies, wrote a list on a whiteboard of things he was "sick of hearing" from his employees.

It included, "Can I leave early today?" "My child is sick, can I rush off?" and "I'll be late in the morning."

Some people responded to the thread, thinking Dance was suggesting he expected his employees to always be at their desks. But that's because they didn't click through to read all his thoughts.

Rather, he was encouraging two-way trust.

"I don't care," Dance wrote. "I hired you for a job and I fully TRUST you to get it done. I don't need you to account for every single hour."

He advised other CEOs to allow their staff autonomy because people "are sick of being treated like children."

Once they read the whole thread, the majority of people who responded agreed with Dance, though others pointed out that his methods might not be applicable to all.

Dance's initial post amassed 14 million views and 52,000 likes.

The 'trust bucket'

Koma Gandy, the VP of business and leadership at Skillsoft, a corporate training platform, said Dance made some good points.

With workplaces now having a mix of Zoomers, millennials, Gen Xers, and boomers, soft skills such as empathy and transparent communication are more important than ever.

Gandy said trust and flexibility are a huge part of building an effective workplace.

In more traditional workplaces, employees may be expected to be visible, attend all meetings, and work online for a certain number of hours. But Gandy said this could perpetuate a toxic cycle of people being "performative" and "bragging" about how busy they are.

"Being busy and effective or not necessarily the same thing," Gandy said. "Your role is not dependent on jiggling a mouse every 10 to 15 minutes because some software is trying to track how busy you are."

Gandy said giving employees the time and space to do their jobs effectively without being micromanaged is like "putting coins in the trust bucket."

"If you're not an empathetic leader, and you're not putting coins in that trust bucket, when the time comes that you're going to need to withdraw, there's going to be nothing in it," she said.

She added that if somebody is struggling or being dishonest about their time, it's likely to become clear in different ways anyway, in their quality of work and performance.

The dangers of undermanaging

Not every employee benefits from having such freedom. Junior staff, in particular, may prefer more structure and guidance on how to manage their time and workload.

There's also a fine line between giving employees more freedom and "undermanaging" their performance.

Kevin Legg, the founder of Sage, a company that develops workplace training, told CNBC in an interview last year that bosses could sometimes fall into that trap of undermanaging, which could be just as damaging as micromanaging.

"In the medium term, there is resentment at annual reviews when folks are passed over for promotions because they never lived up to a standard they were never shown," Legg said.

For the most part, however, research seems to back Dance's style of management as being the most effective as long as employees still have support.

Gartner research from April 2023 found that when employers went big on flexibility — and didn't limit it to when and where people worked — the share of employees who were considered "high performers" jumped by 40%.

A mindset shift

Employees will also have to become comfortable with a more trusting dynamic.

Gandy said if someone is used to being micromanaged and overexplaining every hour of the day, they'd have to "get comfortable" with having downtime in their calendar rather than being in meetings all day, every day.

"You're going to have folks who default to, 'I'm so busy, I have meetings from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and that means I'm extremely valuable,'" Gandy said.

"Well, I would also say that means you're extremely stressed, and you're going to burn out," she added. "It's more important to show up and be impactful in specific places than to show up everywhere."

The signs of burnout can start subtly, such as sleeping in too much on the weekend, having a few too many drinks at happy hour, or developing unhealthy eating patterns.

"You don't want somebody who has cardiovascular issues or can't sleep or has an eating problem because of something you could have missed with just a little bit of investment in trust and leadership and empathy to find out what was going on with that person," Gandy said. "Rather than driving to the point where they start adopting destructive behaviors that affect themselves or affect the company."

Gandy said the benefit of a trusting workplace is a healthier environment with happier, more enthusiastic people.

"Healthier leaders, healthier managers, and healthier organizations," she said. "Why wouldn't we want all that?"