The army of 40,000 was one the worst armies Russia has ever managed to field. It was not a coherent fighting force. The accursed tsar Peter I put foreign officers in charge of Russian troops, as a result the soldiers did not understand and did not trust their commanders. When the army was suddenly attacked by the Swedes, there was chaos, someone thought the foreign officers betrayed Russia and soldiers started killing officers instead of fighting the enemy.
This was the peak of absolutism in Sweden; I'm not sure if there were any ministers on the calibre of Oxenstierna during this era, and their powers would have been significantly curtailed in either case due to the reforms of Charles XII and his father. Unfortunately, I'm not certain that Charles XII was the sort of person to easily accept advice, especially in something he perceived to be within his own sphere of knowledge.
No, go on, tell us how you really feel about Pyotr Velikiy; don't feel the need to hold back on our account.
At any rate, while there were many foreign officers, it's worth noting that most Russian officers at Narva, such as Trubetskoy and Veyde, did not do much better (though Veyde does deserve some credit for maintaining his force's cohesion as long as he did). It was really the culmination of a series of individual disasters that together turned into a full calamity. The army was pressed into combat far too early, before it had been drilled into a credible fighting force, and was facing one of the most dangerous armies of Europe as far as both training and seasoning was concerned. The weather itself was devastating, with the winds driving the multi-day blizzard that had surrounded both armies right into the Russians' eyes. There was a key assumption in the senior leadership, up to and including the Tsar himself, that the Swedes would simply sit and take their lumps instead of rallying to the offensive as they actually did. Finally, as you say, there was also a certain distrust of said foreign officers, in significant part because of the first concern above not having given them time to work together to any significant degree (insofar as any such officer/soldier respect could be said to exist in this era on any systemic level). All of it combined to create the disaster that rent the unprepared army asunder. The battle at Golovchin was one in which it cannot be blamed on foreigners, either; that was Sheremetyev's natural caution and methodical nature that contrasted unfavorably with, again, Charles XII's audacity and keen insight.
