How to build trust in the team?

Have you ever managed people who don’t trust each other? If you have ever experienced it, you probably know that it is an extremely difficult challenge.

Trust is essential for an effective team, because it provides a sense of security. When team members feel safe with each other, they are more open to expressing their weaknesses and taking risks. Conversely, distrust hinders innovation, creative thinking, and productivity, as people spend time covering up and protecting their self-image and self-interest instead of focusing on common goals. . Trust is also needed for knowledge sharing. A study in The Journal of Knowledge Management has shown that trust is the main factor influencing the acquisition of knowledge by a group.

As a leader, what can you do to create a culture of trust in your team? And here are some tips for you:

1. Make an example:

If you want to build trust in the team, use yourself as a living example to demonstrate how much trust you want to instill in the team. When you show trust in your team, colleagues, and superiors, they quickly get the signal and understand how to trust and build trust with each other. If you manage remotely, try to treat the team like you’re working in person by demonstrating a commitment to punctuality and transparency. It’s important that you keep all your promises to be a positive example.

2. Open communication

You need to get everyone on the team to talk honestly with each other. First, create an opportunity for members to voice their wishes on group work principles and ask questions to discuss together to agree on common principles. Next, continue to build team building exercises to quickly “break the ice” and encourage people to actively communicate.

Meeting regularly and encouraging people to share important information and any problems they are having in a timely manner is also an important part. The more they share with each other, the more members trust that there is no concealment of information in the workgroup, leading to a more relaxed atmosphere.

3. Understanding personal problems

Create situations where members share personal issues such as family or hobbies, especially around time after work or during lunch. That way, members will quickly find common ground. At the same time, weekly, you can organize meetings outside of work, bring up topics about personal values and encourage each member to share their own values in life. Values are very important to most people, helping members put more emphasis on humanity in their relationships with the group.

4. Don’t Blame

When working together, mistakes and disappointments are inevitable. However, if everyone “points the finger” at the person at fault, an uncomfortable atmosphere will quickly develop, lowering morale, weakening trust, and ultimately ineffective work. Instead, you should encourage people to think constructively and solve the problem, such as how to make sure the mistake doesn’t happen again or how to move forward together.

5. No factions

Sometimes within a group, there will still be a few small groups that share common interests or work tasks. However, you cannot let this separation isolate the rest. Therefore, start an open discussion about how this split affects other team members to increase trust again.

6. In-depth discussion on trust-related issues

When you’re managing a team that already has trust issues, it’s essential to find out where the root cause of these issues is so that they can be remedied. You can create questionnaires for anonymous surveys, with content assessing the current level of trust in the group, as well as what makes members think that the group is lacking in trust. Then come up with the most common problems for the group to work on together.

Compiled from source: Mind Tools