Trust is the glue that sticks teams together.
Without the advantage of trust, the smartest, most experienced team will become distracted by conflict and division. You need it to inspire your team, find consensus, and bring out everyone’s best efforts.
Trust helps teams overcome the divisions, egos, and disagreements that splinter teams and distract from performance.
Trust is a Virtuous Cycle
The advantage of trust is that it allows people to calm down and focus on common goals. That’s the definition of high performing teams, those who spend most of their time improving and achieving for the company.
When leaders trust their employees and believe they are essentially competent and want to do a good job, engagement and performance soar. 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. Leaders are expected to live by their word and their values. Leaders listen to everyone and consider other people’s ideas before making decisions. The best ideas from everywhere influence how things are done for a continual cycle of process improvement. Gratitude and recognition happen weekly if not daily. There is a sense of camaraderie and egalitarianism.
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.
A few years ago, one of my clients stepped into a management role where two individuals were 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 were fireworks.
The CEO offered to fire one of them, but 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. But she empathized and kept listening. She knew that more than anything, they wanted to feel heard. After a few months, the tone began to change. They wanted recognition, which she was glad to give them 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 were able to work on a project together and even complimented each other in team meetings. The manager was promoted the next year.
Trust Creates a Growth Mindset
A growth mindset pervades a company whose culture is based on trust. This means that any employee, any leader, and any process can be improved and that suggestions are welcome. Everyone is expected to grow and learn, and managers ensure that everyone has opportunities to acquire new skills. Employees who are growing are more likely to be engaged, and as Gallup research has shown, employee engagement is a key predictor for performance 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.