BUILD TRUST!!!! BUILDING TRUST IS HE FOUNDATION OF SUCCESS!!!

When an organization fosters relationship and trust-building behaviors, employees focus on the work they were hired to do and productivity increases. When trust is damaged, morale and productivity begin to decline and turnover increases. Trust builder – Managed expectations.

Aligning your words and actions is a key pillar for building trust with employees and, ultimately, for an organization’s success. We often find employees say that what leaders say and do has the most impact on their perception of an organization. When there is a disconnect between a leader’s words and actions, employees are less likely to become engaged and committed to the organization.

Actions matter most if you want to earn employees’ trust and engage them in the organization. Starting with the leader, it takes involvement at every level to create a deep bond of inevitability that motivates employees to put forth effort needed to make their organization successful.

Here are 6 ways that leaders at all levels can build trust by aligning actions with words:

• Recognize that building trust takes hard work. Trust must be earned. ...
• Be honest and supportive. ...
• Commit to follow through. ...
• Be consistent. ...
• Model the behavior you seek. ...
• Build in accountability.

1. Recognize that building trust takes hard work

Trust must be earned. It comes from conscious effort to walk your talk, keep your promises and align your behavior with your values. Building trust is worth the effort because once trust is lost, it can be very difficult to recover.

2. Be honest and supportive

Even when it’s difficult, tell the truth and not just what you think people want to hear. Understand what employees need to know and communicate facts while being considerate of their effort and sensitive to their feelings. Showing support and understanding for your team members, even when mistakes are made. It goes a long way in building trust as a leader. 

3. Commit to follow through

Even the best-intended talk is hollow if not followed by corresponding action. Say you’ll do something only if you are able to follow through, and don’t commit if there is a chance you won’t be able to deliver. Breaking a commitment can destroy trust you’ve built as well as make people less inclined to trust you in the future.

4. Be consistent

Consistently doing what you say you’ll do builds trust over time – it can’t be something you do only occasionally. Keeping commitments must be the essence of your behavior, in all relationships, day after day and year after year. 

5. Model the behavior you seek

Nothing speaks more loudly about the culture of an organization than the leader’s behavior, which influences employee action and has the potential to drive their results. If you say teamwork is important, reinforce the point by collaborating across teams and functions. Give credit when people do great work and you’ll set the stage for an appreciative culture. 

6. Build in accountability

When you and other leaders acknowledge your mistakes as well as successes, employees see you as credible and will follow your lead. You can encourage honest dialogue and foster accountability by building in processes that become part of the culture, such as an evaluation of every project (positives, negatives, things to change) or a status report and next steps in each meeting agenda (tracking deadlines and milestones)

How do you earn trust in a team?

How To Build Trust With Your Employees

1. Lead by Example. If you want to build trust within your team, then lead by example , and show your people that you trust others. ...
2. Communicate Openly. Open communication is essential for building trust. ...
3. Discuss Trust Issues.

Building Trust Inside Your Team

Ways to Improve Team Cohesion

A strong, cohesive team can achieve anything.

You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don't trust enough. – Frank Crane, American minister and author

Have you ever managed people who didn't trust one another? If you have, then you'll know how challenging and draining this can be.

A team without trust isn't really a team: it's just a group of individuals, working together, often making disappointing progress. They may not share information, they might battle over rights and responsibilities, and they may not cooperate with one another. It doesn't matter how capable or talented your people are, they may never reach their full potential if trust isn't present.

However, when trust is in place, each individual in the team becomes stronger, because he or she is part of an effective, cohesive group. When people trust one another, the group can achieve truly meaningful goals.

So how can you, as a leader, help your team to build the trust that it needs to flourish? In this article we'll look at the issue of trust within teams, why it's important, and what you can do to build it.

The Importance of Trust

One definition describes trust as a "reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something."

Think about that definition for a moment. Trust means that you rely on someone else to do the right thing. You believe in the person's integrity and strength, to the extent that you're able to put yourself on the line, at some risk to yourself.

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.

Trust is also essential for knowledge sharing. A study published in the Journal of Knowledge Management found that trust was a key element in a team's knowledge acquisition. Put simply, if your team members trust one another, they're far more likely to share knowledge, and to communicate openly.

How To Build Trust With Your Employees

As a leader, what can you do to create a culture of trust within your team?

1. 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.

If you manage a virtual team, aim to treat your team members just as you would if you were working face to face. This means making every effort to be on time for conference calls or video chats, and letting your remote team members know when you'll be absent, or on vacation. 

It's important to follow through on the promises you make, and to set an example for everyone else. Keeping your promises is incredibly important in a virtual team, because your word is often all you can give. Positive follow-through builds trust quickly, and can raise the entire group's tone and expectations.

2. 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 organizing 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.

Why is it important to have trust in a team?

A team member who feels she is in a trusting team environment may be more willing to bring up concerns that are relevant to the team's goals or its members. A collaborative and trusting team environment allows team members to share personal information and develop a stronger bond with their teammates.

The Importance of Trust Within a Team

Successful teamwork is built on a foundation of trust. Each member of the team must establish trust, cultivate trust through his actions and words, and work to maintain it. Each member also needs to be able to trust his team members to make a commitment to the team and its goals, work competently with those goals in mind, and communicate consistently about any issues that affect the team.

Commitment

Commitment is an important part of trust. Every team member must commit to helping teammates meet the goals of the team -- no matter if personal or professional obstacles present themselves. For example, a team member who has to take an extended amount of sick leave should be willing to do as much work as possible from home. Team members must be able to rely on one another to do their part of the team's work without fail. Each team member must be cognizant of the detrimental consequences of not following through on commitments.

Competence

Team members must trust that their teammates are competent and can successfully complete the tasks relevant to the team's success. For example, each team member should be able to focus on an assigned task without worrying about teammates following through with their assigned tasks. Individual team members must realize when they need help and ask for it, instead of concealing weaknesses from the group. When team members show vulnerability to their teammates and the teammates respond in an efficient and helpful manner, trust will grow between them.

Communication

Consistent and meaningful communication is necessary for a trusting relationship within a team. For instance, if a team member finishes a task early, he should communicate to his teammates that he is finished and ask if he can help another team member with her part of the work. If one team member discovers vital information that is relevant to the team's success, such as a deadline change or a lack of resources, she should communicate it to the other members as soon as possible. People who work within virtual teams need to make an effort to keep all members within the loop. For example, an email addressed to one or two team members is not sufficient. Instead, a group email or the use of an online collaboration tool is necessary to communicate with every member. Team members who receive communication from other team members should always respond to confirm that they have received the information to build trust.

Collaboration

True collaboration won't happen without a sense of trust between team members. When team members collaborate, they share creative ideas without fear that another team member will take credit for their ideas. A team member who feels she is in a trusting team environment may be more willing to bring up concerns that are relevant to the team's goals or its members. A collaborative and trusting team environment allows team members to share personal information and develop a stronger bond with their teammates.

Advantages & Disadvantages of Building Trust at Work

There's no real upside to being considered an untrustworthy employee. But if you want to stand out as being particularly truthful and reliable, you'll need to go the extra mile in terms of job performance and professional integrity. Establishing a reputation of trust definitely has its advantages, but it also has costs you need to anticipate and consider.

Building Trust at Work

At the simplest level, building trust on the job means doing what you say you're going to do. But in an imperfect world, maintaining trust requires other skills as well. It means being willing to take responsibility for your mistakes without evasion or fault-finding. A trustworthy employee is one who lets managers know about problems before they develop into major failures. Building trust may also mean having to ask for help, or even saying "no" to an assignment when you don't think you can realistically complete it.

The Benefits of Trustworthiness

Managers are often in a bind when it comes to their work load; if they don't delegate to their staff, things won't get done on time. But if they turn a task over to an employee who can't be trusted, the resultant failure will reflect on them. So managers are always desperately looking for employees on which they can rely. A trustworthy employee is more likely to be retained when others are let go, and a reputation for reliability is worth a fortune when you're in the running for a promotion. When you're looking for a new job, prospective employees will certainly ask your references about your trustworthiness.

Disadvantages of a Commitment to Reliability

While it's great to be considered a trustworthy employee, building that reputation isn't always fun. Earning trust often means revealing information about your performance you'd rather not have known -- information your colleagues may be tempted to use against you. To retain trust, you need to complete the tasks you've committed to, when you've committed to get them done, and that commitment can mean long hours when you'd rather be doing something else. In some organizations, reliable employees are "rewarded" with more and more work and may become unfairly overburdened compared to their less-trustworthy colleagues.

Making Trust Pay Off

To reap the rewards of reliability without being taken for granted, it's important to set boundaries for your job commitments and communicate them clearly to your manager. While it may feel as if you're ingratiating yourself by saying "yes" to every task you're handed, good supervisors realize that their staff are human beings and have limits. They would rather know what you feel you can't do -- or are not willing to do -- in advance rather than get your cheerful agreement only to receive a nasty surprise when goals aren't met.

How do you build trust with your team?

How To Build Trust With Your Employees

1. Lead by Example. If you want to build trust within your team, then lead by example , and show your people that you trust others. ...
2. Communicate Openly. Open communication is essential for building trust. ...
3. Discuss Trust Issues.

Building Trust Inside Your Team - Ways to Improve Team Cohesion

A strong, cohesive team can achieve anything.

You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don't trust enough. – Frank Crane, American minister and author

Have you ever managed people who didn't trust one another? If you have, then you'll know how challenging and draining this can be.

A team without trust isn't really a team: it's just a group of individuals, working together, often making disappointing progress. They may not share information, they might battle over rights and responsibilities, and they may not cooperate with one another. It doesn't matter how capable or talented your people are, they may never reach their full potential if trust isn't present.

However, when trust is in place, each individual in the team becomes stronger, because he or she is part of an effective, cohesive group. When people trust one another, the group can achieve truly meaningful goals.

So how can you, as a leader, help your team to build the trust that it needs to flourish? In this article we'll look at the issue of trust within teams, why it's important, and what you can do to build it.

The Importance of Trust

One definition describes trust as a "reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something."

Think about that definition for a moment. Trust means that you rely on someone else to do the right thing. You believe in the person's integrity and strength, to the extent that you're able to put yourself on the line, at some risk to yourself.

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.

Trust is also essential for knowledge sharing. A study published in the Journal of Knowledge Management found that trust was a key element in a team's knowledge acquisition. Put simply, if your team members trust one another, they're far more likely to share knowledge, and to communicate openly.

How To Build Trust With Your Employees

As a leader, what can you do to create a culture of trust within your team?

Make sure that you "walk the talk" here: whenever you have important or relevant information to share, do so immediately. 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.

3. 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 to share personal stories, and to 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 socialize 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.

If your team works remotely, schedule an online "meet and greet" if it's a new team, to help everyone get to know one another as individuals. Ask everyone to write a paragraph or two in their online profiles about their expertise and skills, their personal history, and their interests, and use chat or instant-messaging applications to keep the channels of communication open. You can learn more about this in our article, Five Ways to Build Rapport Online

.

Note:

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?

Discourage Cliques

Sometimes, cliques can form within a team, often between team members who share common interests or work tasks. However, these groups can – even inadvertently – make others feel isolated. They can also undermine trust between group members.

Start an open discussion about this with your team members, and see what they think about cliques and their effect on other group members. Only by addressing the issue openly can you discourage this damaging behavior.

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!)

Key Points

Trust is an essential element in team productivity. Without it, you're unlikely to get anything meaningful done. But with it, teams can accomplish everything they set out to do... and more.

As a leader, it's important that you set an example. Show your team members how critical trust is to you by demonstrating your trust in them, as well as in your colleagues.

Next, make an effort to help everyone get to know each other on a personal level. Encourage conversations on values, family, or hobbies. Last, discourage cliques, if you feel that they're damaging to the group's trust and morale

Understanding the importance of trust in the workplace

Studies show that organizations with a high level of trust have increased employee morale, more productive workers and lower staff turnover.

“Business is conducted through relationships and trust is the foundation of those relationships.”

-Dennis S. Reina and Michelle L. Reina

Reina and Reina describe trust as ‘transactional’ because it is an integrative approach that provides a foundation for effective relationships and work results. The Transactional Trust Model?, published in Trust and Betrayal in the Workplace, inventories a set of trust building behaviors around three key descriptors. When an organization fosters relationship and trust-building behaviors, employees focus on the work they were hired to do and productivity increases. When trust is damaged, morale and productivity begin to decline and turnover increases.

Listed below are the three descriptors of the Transactional Trust Model?, including examples of behaviors that may over time, build or destroy it:

Contractual

1. Trust builder – Managed expectations. Mutual respect and credibility, people do what they say they will do.    
2. Trust destroyer – No follow-through, disrespect and a lack of personal credibility.

Communication

1. Trust builder – Open and honest communication. Active listening, transparency and free-flowing dialogue.
2. Trust destroyer – Communication is secretive, gossip, suspicion and distrust festers.

Competence

1. Trust builder - Input is encouraged and utilized.
2. Trust destroyer - Micromanagement and selective decision-making.

Reina and Reina disclose that a loss of trust does not usually happen from a major event, but instead erodes over time. With scarce resources and organizations being asked to do more with less, it may be more important than ever to understand the value of trust in the workplace and take action to rebuild or sustain it.

Almost everywhere we turn, trust is on the decline. Trust in our culture at large, in our institutions, and in our companies is significantly lower than a generation ago. Research shows that only 49% of employees trust senior management, and only 28% believe CEOs are a credible source of information. Consider the loss of trust and confidence in the financial markets today. Indeed, "trust makes the world go 'round," and right now we're experiencing a crisis of trust. This crisis compels us to ask three questions. First, is there a measurable cost to low trust? Second, is there a tangible benefit to high trust? Third, how can the best leaders build trust in and within their organizations to reap the benefits of high trust?

Most people don't know how to think about the organizational and societal consequences of low trust because they don't know how to quantify or measure the costs of such a so-called "soft" factor as trust. For many, trust is intangible, ethereal, unquantifiable. If it remains that way, then people don't know how to get their arms around it or how to improve it. But the fact is, the costs of low trust are very real, they are quantifiable, and they are staggering.

In 2004, one estimate put the cost of complying with federal rules and regulations alone in the United States -- put in place essentially due to lack of trust -- at $1.1 trillion, which is more than 10% of the gross domestic product. A recent study conducted by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners estimated that the average American company lost 6% of its annual revenue to some sort of fraudulent activity. Research shows similar effects for the other disguised low-trust taxes as well.

Think about it this way: When trust is low, in a company or in a relationship, it places a hidden "tax" on every transaction: every communication, every interaction, every strategy, every decision is taxed, bringing speed down and sending costs up. My experience is that significant distrust doubles the cost of doing business and triples the time it takes to get things done.

By contrast, individuals and organizations that have earned and operate with high trust experience the opposite of a tax -- a "dividend" that is like a performance multiplier, enabling them to succeed in their communications, interactions, and decisions, and to move with incredible speed. A recent Watson Wyatt study showed that high trust companies outperform low trust companies by nearly 300%!

I contend that the ability to establish, grow, extend, and (where needed) restore trust among stakeholders is the critical competency of leadership needed today. It is needed more than any other competency. Engendering trust is, in fact, a competency that can be learned, applied, and understood. It is something that you can get good at, something you can measure and improve, something for which you can "move the needle." You cannot be an effective leader without trust. As Warren Bennis put it, "Leadership without mutual trust is a contradiction in terms."

How do the best leaders build trust?

The first job of any leader is to inspire trust. Trust is confidence born of two dimensions: character and competence. Character includes your integrity, motive, and intent with people. Competence includes your capabilities, skills, results, and track record. Both dimensions are vital.

With the increasing focus on ethics in our society, the character side of trust is fast becoming the price of entry in the new global economy. However, the differentiating and often ignored side of trust -- competence -- is equally essential. You might think a person is sincere, even honest, but you won't trust that person fully if he or she doesn't get results. And the opposite is true. A person might have great skills and talents and a good track record, but if he or she is not honest, you're not going to trust that person either.

The best leaders begin by framing trust in economic terms for their companies. When an organization recognizes that it has low trust, huge economic consequences can be expected. Everything will take longer and everything will cost more because of the steps organizations will need to take to compensate for their lack of trust. These costs can be quantified and, when they are, suddenly leaders recognize how low trust is not merely a social issue, but that it is an economic matter. The dividends of high trust can be similarly quantified, enabling leaders to make a compelling business case for trust.

The best leaders then focus on making the creation of trust an explicit objective. It must become like any other goal that is focused on, measured, and improved. It must be communicated that trust matters to management and leadership. It must be expressed that it is the right thing to do and it is the economic thing to do. One of the best ways to do this is to make an initial baseline measurement of organizational trust and then to track improvements over time.

The true transformation starts with building credibility at the personal level. The foundation of trust is your own credibility, and it can be a real differentiator for any leader. A person's reputation is a direct reflection of their credibility, and it precedes them in any interactions or negotiations they might have. When a leader's credibility and reputation are high, it enables them to establish trust fast -- speed goes up, cost goes down.

There are 4 Cores of Credibility, and it's about all 4 Cores working in tandema€”Integrity, Intent, Capabilities, and Results. Part of building trust is understanding -- clarifying -- what the organization wants and what you can offer them. Be the one that does that best. Then add to your credibility the kind of behavior that builds trust. (see the 13 high trust behaviors below). Next, take it beyond just you as the leader and extend it to your entire organization. The combination of that type of credibility and behavior and organizational alignment results in a culture of high trust.

Consider the example of Warren Buffett -- CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (and generally considered one of the most trusted leaders in the world) -- who completed a major acquisition of McLane Distribution (a $23 billion company) from Wal-Mart. As public companies, both Berkshire Hathaway and Wal-Mart are subject to all kinds of market and regulatory scrutiny. Typically, a merger of this size would take several months to complete and cost several million dollars to pay for accountants, auditors, and attorneys to verify and validate all kinds of information. But in this instance, because both parties operated with high trust, the deal was made with one two-hour meeting and a handshake. In less than a month, it was completed. High trust, high speed, low cost.

13 Behaviors of High-Trust Leaders Worldwide

I approach this strategy primarily as a practitioner, both in my own experience and in my extensive work with other organizations. Throughout this learning process, have identified 13 common behaviors of trusted leaders around the world that build -- and allow you to maintain -- trust. When you adopt these ways of behaving, it's like making deposits into a "trust account" of another party.

1. Talk Straight

2. Demonstrate Respect

3. Create Transparency

4. Right Wrongs

5. Show Loyalty

6. Deliver Results

7. Get Better

8. Confront Reality

9. Clarify Expectation

10. Practice Accountability

11. Listen First

12. Keep Commitments

13. Extend Trust

Remember that the 13 Behaviors always need to be balanced by each other (e.g., Talk Straight needs to be balanced by Demonstrate Respect) and that any behavior pushed to the extreme can become a weakness.

Depending on your roles and responsibilities, you may have more or less influence on others. However, you can always have extraordinary influence on your starting points: Self-Trust (the confidence you have in yourself -- in your ability to set and achieve goals, to keep commitments, to walk your talk, and also with your ability to inspire trust in others) and Relationship Trust (how to establish and increase the trust accounts we have with others).

The job of a leader is to go first, to extend trust first. Not a blind trust without expectations and accountability, but rather a "smart trust" with clear expectations and strong accountability built into the process. The best leaders always lead out with a decided propensity to trust, as opposed to a propensity not to trust. As Craig Weatherup, former CEO of PepsiCo said, "Trust cannot become a performance multiplier unless the leader is prepared to go first."

The best leaders recognize that trust impacts us 24/7, 365 days a year. It undergirds and affects the quality of every relationship, every communication, every work project, every business venture, every effort in which we are engaged. It changes the quality of every present moment and alters the trajectory and outcome of every future moment of our lives -- both personally and professionally. I am convinced that in every situation, nothing is as fast as the speed of trust.

6 Actionable Steps to Building Trust with Employees

Posted by David Grossman on Wed,Sep 14, 2016

A leader’s ability to inspire and motivate employees is based on trust. When people trust you, they have confidence in your decisions. Even in uncertainty, they will be influenced by your leadership. That is because they expect you to do what you say you’ll do. 

Aligning your words and actions is a key pillar for building trust with employees and, ultimately, for an organization’s success. We often find employees say that what leaders say and do has the most impact on their perception of an organization. When there is a disconnect between a leader’s words and actions, employees are less likely to become engaged and committed to the organization.

Actions matter most if you want to earn employees’ trust and engage them in the organization. Starting with the leader, it takes involvement at every level to create a deep bond of believability that motivates employees to put forth effort needed to make their organization successful.