Trust is Fundamental to High Performance

Why is everyone talking about trust, and phycological safety at work? How do you know if it's missing in your organisation, and what do you do to fix it? Read on...

The Critical Role of Trust in the Workplace

Trust is the invisible glue that holds teams and organisations together. Without trust, even the most talented teams fracture and fail in the face of adversity. With trust, teams can surmount seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

As a leader, one of your top priorities must be cultivating a culture built on trust. Here's why it matters so much, how to assess the level of trust on your team, and tips for strengthening trust.

The Benefits of High-Trust Teams

High-trust teams experience substantially greater productivity, engagement, job satisfaction, and commitment to the organisation. Team members are comfortable expressing disagreement, or divergent perspectives, allowing the team to make better decisions. Information and knowledge flow freely between teammates, enhancing coordination and operational effectiveness.

Team members give each other the benefit of the doubt, and feel safe to ask for help or collaboration. This minimises energy-draining distractions from productive work. With strong mutual trust, teams feel psychologically safe to experiment, take smart risks, and learn from setbacks. This enables greater innovation.

Assessing the Trust Deficit

Pay attention to signs of eroding trust on your team.

This may look like such as secrecy, ambiguity, gossip, silo'd working and team members being protective around projects and their specialisms.

Do teammates perceive each other as reliable, authentic, and operating with good intent. Do they feel respected? Are conflict resolution processes fair?

Also assess your team's resilience after setbacks or failures. Do members support each other or start pointing fingers? Is there collective accountability and shared responsibility or blame shifting?

The less trust in a team, the more radical an approach is required to rebuild it.

Building a High-Trust Culture

Leaders define the culture, so you will set the tone for psychological safety on your team.

• Admit your own mistakes often and talk about what you learned. When others make well-intentioned mistakes, treat it as an opportunity for collective learning rather than embarrassment or blame.

• Model open and authentic behaviour yourself, being transparent about your thought processes and motivations.

• Encourage others to be honest, even if it exposes team or organisational weaknesses.

• Reward dissenting thinking by actively listening and considering those perspectives before making decisions.

• Be more human - Invest energy in building personal connections beyond the transactional. Learn about teammates' passions, families, challenges etc. to cultivate mutual understanding and empathy. Encourage teammates to do the same with each other.

Make strengthening trust an ongoing priority, whether through team building activities, new team member onboarding, rewards for collaborative behaviours, and post-project reviews allowing honest feedback.

Building workplace trust requires perseverance, self-reflection, and collective commitment from the entire team. But the exceptional results of high-trust cultures make the effort well worth it. Teams that trust each other can achieve what others cannot.

Open and honest communication from the top will make all the difference.

If you'd like to understand what the temperature is in your team and how to improve it, get in touch.