Building sustainable trust in teams

High-performing teams in the world of sport—like the New Zealand All Blacks—are well-documented. Research stresses the link between trust, teamwork, and performance. Trust, teamwork, and performance accord in the world of business too. 

The All Blacks is a relevant and inspirational illustration of trust and its positive bearing on performance. Great teams invest in building trusting relationships.

High trust buffer destructive outside forces attempting to destabilize a team. Using divide and rule tactics is less effective on cohesive teams with exceptional shared trust between its members. 

Fostering trust isn’t a one-off event. Trust is dynamic—it needs continual attention and nurturing. It’s possible, for instance, to trust someone one day, and not the next. Trust can be contingent on the situation or circumstances. You may trust a lawyer for legal advice—but not when they proffer personal advice, for example.

Apart from the situation, trust is formed in multiple ways. Mila Hakanen and Aki Soundunsaari in their article, Building Trust in High-Performing Teams, contend that trust is promoted through personal knowledge, regular face-to-face interaction, empathy, respect, and genuine listening.[i] Track record and past experiences also fortifies or erodes trust.

Trust needs to be continually cultivated. Even robust relationships need maintenance, like a smooth-running car. Developing trust can take takes time, but it can be broken in the blink of an eye. Trust is a work-in-progress.

Elements of trust

In one of my previous books, Conversations at Work: Promoting a Culture of Conversation in the Changing Workplace (co-authored with Aubrey Warren)[ii], we cited five essential elements of trust:

• openness
• acceptance
• congruence
• reliability and
• competence.

These elements are experienced, communicated, and assessed through our interactions with others.

There’s no doubting the central role of trust in relationships. Edelman PR have been tracking trust in government and business around the world for many years, each year releasing a ‘trust barometer.’

We believe trust is an asset that enterprises must understand and properly manage in order to be successful in today’s complex operating environment. Unlike reputation, which is based on an aggregate of past experiences with a company or brand, trust is a forward-facing metric of stakeholder expectation.[iii]

In his book, The Speed of Trust, Stephen M. R. Covey makes the case for investing in trust relationships with his equation that when trust goes up, speed goes up and cost goes down. And when trust goes down, speed goes down and cost goes up.[iv] Or, as Ralph Waldo Emerson put it: “Our distrust is very expensive.” Trust or distrust facilitates or hinders individual, team, and organizational performance.

So how is trust built? The answer: one conversation at a time.

So, let’s look at the five elements of trust, briefly, and its application to conversation.

Openness

Appropriate openness in our conversations gives others a sense of our self-confidence and willingness to connect with them. Being a closed book or playing your cards close to the chest means it’s hard to know what others are really like. Trusting others involves some openness or self-disclosure. Yes, there’s a risk of rejection in being an open book—but trusting someone is ultimately about candidness and understanding.

Some people are naturally more open about themselves than others (which is not always a good thing—especially if you’re seated next to them on a long flight!). But any healthy relationship grows from being appropriately self-disclosing. Openness communicates to the other person a willingness to invest in the bond. We can’t expect others to let us know about themselves if we aren’t willing to do the same. Leaders need to take the first step in being suitably open with those whom they lead.

Acceptance

Acceptance is the flip-side of the openness coin. When people share information about themselves, they’ve chosen to take a risk—to be a little vulnerable. We know there’s the chance of rejection or judgment when we divulge something personal about us. So, it’s important that we manage our prejudices and biases to accept others for who they are and accept their perspectives as their own, even if we don’t agree.

Congruence

Congruence in communication is measured by how aligned our words are with what we mean. Do we talk straight, or do we couch our opinions and contributions in qualifications or hesitant phrases? There’s a balance to be struck here, of course, between bluntness and avoidance. We can trust people who are direct a lot more than those who always try to make things nice by avoiding the hard issues. But bluntness also has its own limitations. The straight language people use is often stronger than the actions they’re prepared to take—which is in-congruent rather than congruent. 

Congruence means being assertive—that balance between aggressiveness and avoidance. It’s an element of trust because it communicates respect—respect for our own views and respect for the capacity of others to handle reasonable directness.

Reliability

Reliability is a familiar element of trust—it sends a message that you will do what you say you will do. Over-promising, under-delivering, procrastinating, and inconsistency signal a lack of reliability—and result in erosion of trust.

Competence

Competence is a fifth element of trust, that’s sometimes overlooked. We all learn to trust ourselves and others in some situations, but not others, as I mentioned before. We may trust our own judgment in financial matters based on our expertise in that area, but not trust ourselves to make strategic decisions because we acknowledge our limitations there. Likewise, we may trust our manager to competently lead a project but not to make a presentation about it to stakeholders. Trust and distrust can be associated with task competence and incompetence. Because physical, emotional, and professional safety is fundamental to us, we instinctively look for demonstrated competence as a part of our trust assessment.

These five elements of trust—openness, acceptance, congruence, reliability, and competence—increase or reduce trust in our relationships. So, it’s helpful to consciously exercise them when communicating with others.

Would you like to know more about building trust in your team?

Join me this Friday 28 May at 11:30am for 30-minutes on a special broadcast (free-of-charge): Building Unbreakable Trust In Teams.

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Trust is the glue that makes teams stick. But trust is elusive and hard to attain while easy to lose. Trust is paramount to high performance. Join me to identify some ways to build trust with team members and stakeholders.

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Dr Tim Baker is a thought leader in leadership development and performance management, best selling author, and international consultant. having consulted across 21 industries over 18 years, Tim has discovered what makes people tick. To find out more, go to WINNERS-at-WORK Pty Ltd. How do the teams you leader measure up against these eight characteristics?

[i] Hakanen, M., & Soudunsaari, A. (2012). Building trust in high-performing teams. Technology Innovation Management Review, 2, 6.

[ii] Baker, T. & Warren, A. (2015). Conversations at work: Promoting a culture of conversation in the changing workplace. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

[iii] Edelman (2014) “2014 Edelman Trust Barometer.” https://www.edelman.com.

[iv] Covey, S.M.R. & Merrill, R.R. (2006) The speed of trust: The one thing that changes everything. New York: Free Press.