Create a Culture of Trust Within Your Team
In this article we explain what you can do to create a culture of trust within your team and why it is important to build it.
Trust is essential to an effective team, because it provides a sense of safety. When your team members feel safe with each other, they feel comfortable to open up, take appropriate risks, and expose vulnerabilities.
Without trust there’s less innovation, collaboration, creative thinking, and productivity, and people spend their time protecting themselves and their interests – this is time that should be spent helping the group attain its goals.
If your team members trust one another, they’re far more likely to share knowledge, and communicate openly.
When people trust one another, the group can achieve truly meaningful goals. So how can you, as a leader, help your team build the trust that it needs to flourish?
Lead by Example
If you want to build trust within your team, then lead by example , and show your people that you trust others. This means trusting your team, your colleagues, and your boss.
Never forget that your team members are always watching and taking cues from you – take the opportunity to show them what trust in others really looks like.
Communicate Openly
Open 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.
First, create a team charter to define the purpose of the team, as well as each person’s role. Present this charter at the first team meeting, and encourage each team member to ask questions, and discuss his or her expectations.
Next, consider organising team building exercises. When chosen carefully and planned well, these exercises can help “break the ice” and encourage people to open up and start communicating.
It’s useful to help your people understand that other people’s approaches and insights can be as valid as their own. Meet regularly, so that all team members have a chance to talk about their progress, and discuss any problems that they’re experiencing.
This time spent face-to-face is an important part of getting to know each other. It also creates opportunities for team members to talk, and to help one another solve problems.
Demonstrate that open communication is important to you by consistently sharing with the group. The more you share with your team members, and thereby prove that you have no hidden agenda, the more comfortable they’ll feel trusting you and each other.
Know Each Other Personally
One way to build trust is to encourage your team members to see their colleagues as people. Think about creating situations that help them share personal stories, and bond.
Do this by asking sensitively about their family, or about their hobbies. Start by sharing some personal information about yourself, and then ask someone else about a hobby, or a musical interest.
Another way to get the team acquainted, and to form stronger bonds, is to socialise after work or at lunch.
For example, you could set aside time each week for informal group discussions.
Consider asking team members to put forward suggestions on topics you could all cover. To start with, you could start a discussion around values .
Share some of your own values, and encourage others to share theirs. Values are important to most people, and starting a conversation that allows people to share them highlights your team’s humanity.
Important: use your own best judgment when asking team members or colleagues personal questions – don’t invade their privacy.
Don’t Place Blame
When people work together, honest mistakes and disappointments happen, and it’s easy to blame someone who causes these. However, when everyone starts pointing fingers, an unpleasant atmosphere can quickly develop.
This lowers morale, undermines trust, and is ultimately unproductive. Instead, encourage everyone in your group to think about the mistake in a constructive way. What can you all do to fix what happened, and move forward together? And how can you make sure that this mistake doesn’t happen again?
Discuss Trust Issues
If you manage an established team that has trust issues, it’s essential to find out how these problems originate, so that you can come up with a strategy for overcoming them. Consider giving team members a questionnaire to fill out anonymously.
Ask them about the level of trust within the group, as well as why they think there’s a lack of trust. Once you’ve read the results, get everyone together to talk about these issues (but make sure that you respect the anonymity of the survey)
(Reference: http://www.crowe-associates.co.uk/teams-and-groups/the-importance-of-trust-in-teams/)
