If your team is distracted by conflict and division, boost trust and see if you can double your results.
You need trust to inspire your team, find consensus, and double team results. It brings out everyone’s best efforts. Trust is the glue that sticks teams together. A lot of people are not really sure how trust works and how to build it. Make no mistake, trust is a skill that you have to develop if you want your team to perform well, and maybe even double team results like my client did. (BTW, she also got a promotion.)
When you intentionally cultivate relationships of trust, teams overcome the divisions, egos, and disagreements that splinter teams and distract from performance.
Trust is a Virtuous Cycle
Trust allows people to calm down and focus on common goals. By definition, high performing teams spend most of their time improving processes and achieving common goals.
When leaders trust their employees, engagement and performance soar. In addition, when leaders are empathetic and listen to their team, trust rebounds and good things happen.
Trust always begins with a basic dedication to respect and honesty. Team members expect leaders to live by their word and their values. Good leaders listen to everyone and consider other people’s ideas before making decisions. Finding the best ideas from everywhere helps power a continual cycle of process improvement. On the best teams, gratitude and recognition happen weekly if not daily. The advantage of trust is that it builds a sense of camaraderie and egalitarianism.
An Example: Why Experience and Technical Skills are Not Enough
Without trust, even good teams descend into distractions like defensiveness, territorialism, factionalism. Where people mistrust each other, there is no time to make good use of excellent skills. Instead, people are too busy defending themselves.
For example, a few years ago, one of my clients stepped into a management role. She inherited two team members locked in conflict. Both had excellent and complementary skills. Together they would be a perfect team, EXCEPT… that they couldn’t work together. Every time they came close to each other, there fireworks flew.
As the manager stepped into managing the team, the CEO offered to fire one of them. However, the manager was determined to keep them. To rebuild trust, she dedicated herself to listening to them in one-on-one meetings. Listening is the most important sign of respect and the best way to build trust.
At first, all she heard was complaints and anger. Still, she hung in there, empathized and kept listening. She knew that more than anything, they wanted to feel heard. After a few months, the tone began to change. At that point, they wanted recognition. She gladly gave them shoutouts and kudos in staff meetings and elsewhere.
Within a year, they were working together, and by halfway through the second year, team productivity had doubled. They weren’t best of friends, but they stopped fighting and learned to trust each other. So, they were able to work together and even complimented each other in team meetings.
As a result of her superior management of the team and improved results, the manager received a promotion the next year.
Trust Creates a Growth Mindset
A growth mindset is a result of a culture based on trust. When you have a growth mindset, you assume that any employee, any leader, and any process can be improved. Therefore, suggestions are welcome. Everyone is expected to grow and learn. In fact, managers ensure that everyone has opportunities to acquire new skills. Employees who grow are more likely to be engaged. In turn, Gallup research has shown that employee engagement is a key predictor for performance in areas like safety, customer loyalty, retention, and profitability.
When leaders respect and care about their employees, top to bottom, employees return respect and care for the organization. Information flows freely. Processes improve continually. Employees focus on common goals and supporting team achievement. Employees go above and beyond for their teams.
Freedom is the ultimate expression of trust. The freedom to do your job, the freedom to think for yourself and make your job better, the freedom to find the processes that work best for you all result in the best performance possible. When people have freedom in their job, they put more effort in and inspire themselves.
Want to Learn More?
A few other quick hits about trust and performance.
- Trust at Work: The Most Important Way to Boost Team Performance —If you want to boost performance, start here. Essential information you need to know to actually get results.
- The Cycle of Trust and Mistrust: How the Expectations Effect Raises (or Lowers) Team Performance –Why trust and performance are closely linked, and how trust shows up at work (it’s more sensitive than you might think).
- How to Build Trust at Work: Five Everyday Actions – Practical tips to start increasing trust on your team now.
- What is Psychological Safety and How Does it Improve Performance? — make it safe to speak up and learn faster.
- How to Encourage Your Team to Speak Up More How to re-engage your team and get better effort, innovation, and problem solving from them.
Do you build trust at work? Take my Leadership Skills Audit to find out.
