When you trust the people you work with you can work together seamlessly. You’re more effective, you’re happy to take worthwhile risks and you can work securely, knowing that your co-workers will support you – just as you will support them. In this post we’re looking at trust – what it is, why it’s important and how you can develop it and what you can do to rebuild trust if it’s been lost.
Trust in the workplace is defined as “a shared psychological state in a team that is characterized by an acceptance of vulnerability based on expectations of intentions or behaviours of others within the team. Put in a simpler way, trust describes a situation where you’re not worried about being vulnerable, because you’re confident that the people around you will support you and won’t take advantage of your vulnerability.
Research has shown that a good level of trust directly leads to healthy risk-taking in relationships. The higher the level of trust, the more that people are willing to take career risks for their leader or for their organization. That same research suggested that levels of trust predicted sales, profits and employee turnover; and the more that teams trusted their leaders, the harder they worked, the less likely they were to quit, and the more money the organization earned. Successful teams are built on trust and there are several ways to build it:
Be Honest
People will trust you if they can count on you to tell the truth, even when this is hard. This includes telling the truth about yourself, or about any mistakes you’ve made. If your position prohibits you from sharing certain information with your team, then be honest about this as well. Promise that as soon as you know something, or as soon as you get approval to share more information, you’ll do so immediately.
Be a Team Player
As a leader, you need to speak up for and even defend your team from time to time – for example, if people are being criticized unfairly, or are being asked to deliver to an unreasonably tight deadline. When this happens, stay loyal to your team and say what you need to say. When things go well, make sure that your team gets credit for team accomplishments, and ensure that your bosses know how hard your people are working. When your team sees you sticking up for them, and spreading the word about their hard work, they’ll put more trust in you.
Be Transparent
People will also trust you more if they can see, at any time, why decisions are being made the way they are. The more transparent you are with information, the more your people will understand why you do what you do. Communicate as openly as you can about decisions, processes and changes. Encourage your team to participate openly in as many decisions are possible. By allowing them to ask questions and offer you their ideas, you demonstrate that you care about their input.
Avoid Micromanagement
Often, people see micromanagement as a lack of trust. After all, if you’re constantly checking on what your people are doing, it must mean you don’t trust them, when possible, trust people to do their jobs right and well.
Rebuilding TrustSo, how does trust get broken? Common reasons include:
- Acting and speaking inconsistently.
- Striving for personal gain over team success.
- Withholding information.
If you’re working in a situation where trust has been broken, keep in mind that it’s going to take time to rebuild it. First, it’s important to be open about how trust was lost. Sit everyone down and acknowledge the situation. This can be a difficult conversation, especially if the betrayal of trust was severe. If you’re nervous, prepare for the conversation which is a particularly effective technique for practicing how you’ll handle difficult conversations.
Next, encourage people to talk openly about what happened and how they feel about it. Allowing everyone to express their pain, anger or frustration is a big step towards letting it all go. This difficult conversation might cause conflict within the group, especially when loyalties are split.
If trust was broken because of something you said or did, then take full responsibility for what happened and apologize sincerely. Let people know that you understand that you’ve lost their trust, but that you will work hard to gain it back again. Again, make sure that you “walk the walk”.