Trust is how a team becomes more than the sum of its parts. This is true for any team, such as a sales team, a sports team or a group project in school. This article will help you gain a better understanding of what trust in a team looks like, why you should care, and offer advice on how you can build it in your workplace.
What Is Trust in a Team?
One definition describes trust as a “reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something.”
So what does that mean? It means you’d wilfully rely on someone else to do something that impacts you. You choose to believe in that person’s ability and integrity, relinquish your control, and expect a good result.
Think of Wayne Gretzky. In Wayne’s NHL career, he scored 894 goals, more than any player in NHL history. In his career, he also amassed 1,963 assists. This means that, even though Wayne was the greatest goal-scorer in NHL history, he still thought it was a better decision to have someone else take the shot over twice as often.
Because Wayne trusted his teammates to do a good job, he earned 2,857 points in his career, often considered the most unbreakable record in professional sports. For this, he earned the moniker ‘The Great One’.
Wayne Gretzky’s Oilers were a team of good players working together to become more than the sum of their parts. Together, they won four Stanley Cups. We’ve seen other dream teams fail to succeed, often because the individuals failed to check their ego, relinquish control, and trust their teammates to get the job done.
If Wayne Gretzky can pass the puck, so can anyone else. If you do too, you’ll not only achieve greater team results, you’ll achieve greater individual results as well.
Trust Leads to Team Accountability
When a team trusts each other, they’re able to push each other to do more and do it better. Team-mates are willing to accept the pressure because they know that the person who is pushing them genuinely has their best interests in mind.
This is called ‘holding each other accountable’, and it’s the difference between average/underperforming teams and excellent teams.
Employees hold each other accountable when team-goals are in place (like winning a sports game, getting an A on a group project or hitting a team-based sales goal), and teammates trust each other. The wonderful side-effect for the leader of the group is that the team-members become very self-directed and self-motivated.
Team accountability only happens in trusting environments. If you try to push it when there are trust issues, it will explode in your face. You have to build that trust first.
Laura Stack, in her book ‘Faster Together: Accelerating Your Team’s Productivity‘, writes, “In the workplace, accountability assumes a high level of trust among everyone involved. This requires you and your team members to develop a team culture that, while questioning the status quo, believes that others have your best interests at heart.”
A trusting environment is critical for growth because it provides a sense of safety. When a person feels safe with their teammates, they feel comfortable asking for help, offering help, and taking good risks. And further, people who trust each other are more likely to share knowledge openly rather than withhold it.
What Happens If a Team Lacks Trust?
A team without trust isn’t a team, it’s a group of individuals. While each individual may have similar goals or job descriptions that force them to work together, they won’t even reach their own potential, nevermind the full potential of the team.
Instead of sharing information, they might withhold information. Instead of pushing each other to do more, they might squabble over who does the least. Instead of supporting each other, they might not even cooperate. Does this sound familiar?
People who don’t trust their teammates don’t like to take chances because their actions could be criticized. Instead, people expend their efforts protecting themselves and their interests. As a result, there’s less collaboration, creative thinking, innovation and productivity.
And finally, a lack of trust can affect the way people handle customers. I’ve seen this before — salespeople not letting other salespeople talk to their customers, servers not letting other servers to talk to their tables, etc. This is all obvious to the customer (who receives a worse experience as a result), and it damages the customer’s trust towards the organization.
Think back to the Wayne Gretzky example. Imagine if he didn’t trust his teammates, and chose to shoot whenever he had the chance (because after all, he had the best shot). Not only would he have missed out on all the assists that helped make him ‘The Great One’, but we could also assume that defenders wouldn’t have given him the space to shoot, knowing that they didn’t have to worry about him passing the puck to a team-mate. So by choosing not to trust his teammates, even his individual goals would have become much harder to come by. Teamwork in your organization may not be about helping each other avoid NHL defenders, but I’m sure you can immediately imagine your own equivalent barriers.
In short, regardless of how capable and talented your people are, they may never reach their full potential if they can’t trust one another.
So How Do You Build Trust?
Now you know how important trust is. So how can you build that trust?
Trust is more than simply saying, “I trust you.” For example, a lot of leaders say they trust their teams, but micromanage their staff and refuse to delegate important work.
It takes consistent action over time to build trust. It doesn’t just happen, and you can’t rush it. Here are my favourite ways to build trust in a team:
1. Lead by Example
Leading by example means holding yourself to the same standards to which you hold your employees. This means showing your people that you trust others. As often as possible, demonstrate trust with your team, your colleagues and your boss. Your team members are always watching and taking cues from you — take the opportunity to show them what trust in others really looks like.
A powerful way to demonstrate that trust is by admitting when you fail or get something wrong. Your fallibility and subsequent accountability show your team that nobody is perfect, nor are they expected to be; but through openness, accountability, teamwork, and trust, obstacles can be overcome.
2. Facilitate Open and Respectful Team Meetings
Open and respectful communication is essential for building trust. You need to get everyone on your team talking to one another in an honest, meaningful way, and you can use several strategies to accomplish this. Much of your communication as a team will take place during team meetings, so start with them.
A first step I would recommend would be to create a set of ‘ground rules’. Ground rules are typically made like this:
- At the beginning of a meeting, the facilitator puts up a big piece of white paper labelled ‘Ground Rules.’
- Explain that the intent is to define the rules that the group will adhere to in order to run an effective, respectful, and collaborative meeting. Explain that these rules will be brought back for every meeting going forward. Gain agreement from everyone, and remember to store the rules in a safe place.
- Don’t be afraid to add a couple of rules of your own. Some of my favourites include ‘start and end meetings on time’, ‘no interrupting’, ‘no phones or emails’, and ‘everyone reads the agenda and prepares ahead of time’.
As a second step, include a standing item on the agenda each week called ‘team round-table’. At this part of the meeting, give your employees the opportunity to bring up topics that they feel are important, and work through problems as a team. The meeting ground rules provide a sense of safety, which makes the team feel comfortable proposing topics and asking for the opinions and support of others.
It’s critical that you include the team roundtable each week and offer a reasonable amount of time. By including it each week, you demonstrate that you are not just paying it lip-service — it’s actually a part of the meeting. In contrast, If you ask a question at the end of your meeting such as “does anybody have anything before we wrap up?”, stop doing that immediately. Employees hear “the meeting is over. We can go as long as no one asks a question”. At this point, the group already has its figurative foot out the door. People won’t be willing to get into a fruitful discussion, and they’ll be annoyed at the person who asked the question for holding everyone up.
Over time, as your team gets accustomed to having respectful conversations each week, the trust will grow and respectful communication practices will begin to permeate your organization.
3. Set Team Goals
The best teams I see are always deeply committed to team-goals. Team-goals are great because they get people to work together proactively to solve problems.
When the leader focuses primarily on team-goals, the team starts to believe that they win or lose together. And because team goals rely on a team effort, they encourage organic collaboration between the people. People become willing to help their peers, and they’ll feel a sense of accomplishment from doing so.
My suggestion is that your first meeting of the month focuses on setting team goals for the month. Once the goals are set, post them up on a big piece of paper where everyone sees them every day, and discuss them at every meeting throughout the month.
Consider successful sports teams: no sports team has achieved greatness by focusing on personal achievements. Every player on the roster is obsessed with a singular goal — winning the championship. This is what you want.
When people depend on one another for success, even the most self-centered employees will be compelled to support their peers. Over time, that consistent peer-support creates trust.
These two articles that can help you set good goals with your team:
- 5 Scientific Principles to Make Your Goals Successful
- How to Make Better Goals with the ‘S.M.A.R.T. Framework’
4. Encourage Staff-Led Projects
Dennis and Michelle Reina, in their book ‘Trust and Betrayal in the Workplace‘, write, “… when you trust your co-workers’ abilities to make good decisions, you reinforce their trust in themselves, and you encourage them to trust your decisions as well.” By offering responsibilities that stretch a person’s capabilities and support their own development, their trust in you, the organization and each other will also grow. The Reina’s call this concept Trust of Capability; it “infuses your workplace with optimism, energy, and a collective sense that individual expertise is valued.”
I find that having employees take full accountability for their projects is a simple and powerful tool. In my experience, the practice is usually very low-risk and high-reward.
As a leader, you open up opportunities for breakthrough innovation, process improvements and enhanced profitability. Meanwhile, the employee learns that they’re capable of more than they thought. They become bolder and more confident. They’ll start involving other staff members in their projects, thereby spreading engagement, development and organizational ‘buy-in’ across your team.
Critical to this process is that you let your team members experiment, learn and even fail through the process. That’s where the real trust-building happens. If you give too much direction or you intervene as soon as things go south, you’ll show that you don’t trust them. However, if you hold yourself back, you’ll see that there’s no better trust-builder than making an employee responsible for a meaningful part of the business.
5. Manage Cliques
Sometimes, cliques can form between team-members who share common interests or jobs. In principle, I’m not against cliques forming in the workplace. However, these groups can inadvertently make others feel isolated, particularly if work decisions are being made in these exclusive side discussions.
Resolve this by having open discussions about cliques with your team members, and seeing what they think about cliques and their effect on other group members.
6. Eliminate Blame
When people work together, honest mistakes and disappointments happen. In teams were trust is pervasive, employees will be willing to admit their mistakes, and the team will work together to find solutions. However, in teams where distrust is high, folks will blame others instead. This lowers morale, undermines trust, and ravages your organizational culture.
As a leader, you need to encourage discussions about failure. When an employee makes a mistake, admits it, and takes steps to fix it, then reward that behavior. When an employee avoids placing blame and instead finds ways to support their peers and work through issues, reward that behavior as well.
On the other hand, if you have an employee who is quick to blame others, find out why they felt compelled to place that blame. Is it because they’re afraid they’ll be swept up in consequences? Does your organization have a history of punishing employees for errors, or rewarding employees for exposing one-another?
Talk with employees, and make sure they fully understand your values and expectations around trust and team-work. Let them know that what you value is team-work, and what you look forward to is hearing about creative and effective solutions. And make it clear that blame shows a lack of trust, and that’s not acceptable.
7. Manage Gossip
Some level of gossip in the workplace is inevitable. It’s not always healthy per se, but coworkers do get some social benefit from gossip that shares innocuous information. Besides, If you attempt to ban gossip, it’ll just flourish out of your sight.
Instead, manage it. Have a discussion with your team about gossip in the workplace. Ask questions like “what are your thoughts on office gossip?” and “what kind of gossip do you believe is appropriate, and what isn’t?”
In a team meeting, you could have your team set their own guidelines around office gossip, e.g. what is and is not acceptable, and document them on a big piece of paper for reference. When a team makes its own rules, they’re typically very reasonable, they’ll commit to them, and they’ll hold themselves accountable to them.
And of course, as a leader, you should set a good example by refraining from gossip. Imagine if your boss discussed office politics with you (perhaps they do), or revealed personal information about a coworker. Would you be confident that they wouldn’t gossip about you to others? You may enjoy hearing the gossip, but ultimately, it’s going to harm the trust and respect between you.
‘High-Trust’ teams are more than the sum of their parts. They can push each other to do more and do it better. Think of a sports dynasty, the Navy SEALs or a great sales team!
— Chris (@ChrisjBergen) January 29, 2020
Check out this article to learn how you can build trust at work 🚀https://t.co/1LyJmpRyeS #Leadership
Final Thoughts
Trust is an essential element in team productivity. With it, teams can achieve vastly greater results than they could as individuals. Without it, a team will struggle to achieve even the most basic performance expectations.
Today, countless frontline staff members suffer from a lack of trust at work. The workplace is evolving quickly, and people are being asked to do more work for less pay. People see how the division of wealth is growing, and they can connect the dots — they know that they’re being taken advantage of. It should be no surprise then that the days of loyalty between an organization and it’s employees are gone.
As a leader, you need to start now. Build trust with your team, offer real value to your staff through rewarding work and career development, and convey the linkages between the work of the employee and a greater ‘why’ than simply making money for the company.
