How to Build Trust In A Team
When first starting out as an entrepreneur, building a trusted team can feel like an overwhelming task.
How do you find the right people with the right skills? How do you get them to buy into your vision? Most importantly, how do you earn their trust and build unity among a diverse group of employees and contractors? These are difficult questions with no easy answers.
As a business owner myself, I’ve made many mistakes along the way. Through trial and error, I’ve discovered a few key principles for establishing trust within a team that I want to share with you today.
While growing pains are inevitable, focusing on these foundations early on can help take your business to new heights and make the difficult periods more manageable.
In this post, we’ll explore why trust matters so much, how to build it, and the importance of transparency, accountability, effective communication, and mutual respect when bringing a team together.
Also, I will discuss some employee engagement survey tools you can use to measure and strengthen trust within your startup’s team.
I hope these insights kickstart your efforts to build a high-performing and SMART team centered around trust.
The Immense Value of Building Trust
Building trust is essential in any relationship, whether personal or professional. Its immense value cannot be understated; it forms the foundation for effective communication, robust teamwork, and mutual respect. With trust, we can create environments where ideas flourish, innovation thrives, and relationships prosper.
Here are all the answers to why it truly matters:
#1) Trust Powers Team Cohesion
When members trust each other deeply, communication flows more openly, constructive debate is encouraged, and people feel empowered to voice concerns or challenge ideas without fear of retribution or judgment.
Psychological safety emerges, which research confirms is pivotal for risk-taking, creativity, and breakthrough innovation, which are essential for successful startups.
#2) Trust Enables Delegation And Autonomy
Leaders can feel secure handing primary responsibilities to team members; they can build trust profoundly. This empowers those members to take full ownership and work independently without excessive oversight, vastly increasing operational efficiency, organizational agility, and innovation velocity.
#3) Trust Supports Resilience During Difficult Times
Startups face many unpredictable challenges, from funding issues to changing market conditions, as COVID-19 demonstrated. When adversity inevitably arises, high-trust teams collaborate effectively to persevere through crises versus descending into blame games or infighting, which compound the problems.
Trust is the glue that bonds entrepreneurial teams together, enabling peak performance, cohesion, and adaptability to weather any storm. Hence, leaders must focus on actively finding ways how to build trust.
Building Interpersonal Trust
While trust extends to competence, capabilities, and judgment, it originates interpersonally. People must first trust each other’s intentions and character before trust in abilities can form. Below are proven techniques for nurturing interpersonal trust within a team.
#1) Establish Transparency and Truthfulness
Building trust begins with sincere, accurate, and timely communication. Share all relevant information freely, share your own interests, candidly admit mistakes, and avoid losing insight due to fear or ego.
Operate with integrity even when it’s complicated. Nothing erodes trust faster than perceived lies, omissions, and misalignment between words and actions.
#2) Show Concern for People’s Well-being
Go beyond caring just about tasks. Demonstrate genuine concern for teammates as human beings. Check-in on them, plan one-on-one meetings, seek to understand any difficulties they face personally or professionally, and offer support without judgment.
You cannot care deeply about results without caring about the individuals responsible for achieving them.
#3) Exhibit Reliability and Consistency
Follow through fully on promises and commitments made to others. Avoid overcommitting or surprising people with unexpected changes.
Behave consistently across contexts and situations so people know what they can expect from you and can count on you upholding your word. Reliability builds safety.
#4) Grant and Acknowledge Mistakes
Mistakes happen, especially when innovating. Establish a culture where they are learning opportunities, not punishable offenses. Allow others their humanity while requiring accountability and growth after errors.
Admit your own mistakes freely and apologize for the harm caused. Avoid playing the blame game. Granting grace builds resilience.
#5) Share Decision-making and Power
While leaders ultimately decide, incorporate new team input meaningfully into significant decisions. Ensure all voices are heard and valued. Share status, information, responsibilities, and credit abundantly. The more people feel ownership in the organization’s success, the more they trust their leaders.
#6) Express Appreciation Abundantly
Recognition motivates continued contribution and reflects respect for people’s efforts. Thank team members personally for their work, call out their contributions publicly, and celebrate shared wins, small and large.
People give their all when appreciated. Gratitude feeds goodwill.
#7) Create Opportunities for Vulnerability
Vulnerability fosters deeper bonds and understanding between people. Share personal stories, challenges, fears, or mistakes. Encourage others to do the same without judgment. Be present and validate the emotions expressed. Choosing vulnerability signals building trust in the relationship.
#8) Practice Empathetic Listening
Focus on understanding others when they speak instead of just waiting to respond. Ask clarifying questions, paraphrase content, and reflect feelings heard. Make it safe for people to share openly. Listening with empathy builds connection.
#9) Extend Grace During Conflict
Inevitable disagreements should deepen understanding, not divide a trusting relationship. Hear each other out, validate merit in opposing perspectives, identify root issues, and then find common ground.
Judge ideas but not character. Resolve respectfully. Handled well, conflict strengthens bonds.
#10) Share Life Experiences Together
Camaraderie and care grow by sharing experiences outside work. Organize team events, meals, adventures, or volunteering opportunities.
The joy and trials faced together form meaningful memories and emotional ties. Time together nourishes the human connection.
By consistently living these team trust-building principles, founders can foster the interpersonal security essential for full collaboration. Next, we explore formalized ways to measure and strengthen trust continually.
#11) Measuring and Reinforcing Trust
Trust naturally fluctuates even in functional teams, as changing circumstances impact relationships and morale. Regularly assessing the trust level enables issues to be promptly addressed before fracturing the foundation. Some options include:
#12) Conduct Team Member Trust Surveys Anonymously
Well-designed employee engagement survey tools can gauge the degree of vulnerability-based trust perceived. Score questions on safety in risk-taking, capability in mistake-making, reliability of colleagues, and transparency of leaders. Trend lines will reveal trust health. Surveys should be conducted regularly, such as quarterly, to spot trends and use the data to guide improvements.
#13) Host “Start, Stop, Continue” Sessions Periodically
Gather team input about what behaviors or processes currently start, stop, or continue building trust. Open sharing within a psychologically safe environment, whether on-site or for a virtual team, can yield constructive insights that were otherwise hidden.
These sessions can reveal early cracks in trust before they become fissures, providing opportunities for timely repair.
#14) Implement The 15Five System For Continual Check-Ins
This method allows team members to share weekly updates and request or provide peer feedback on trust-affirming or trust-breaking interactions to reinforce positive, proactive communication.
When done consistently, 15Five helps identify erosion points quickly and enables appreciation to be shared regularly to bolster team cohesion.
While assessing and strengthening trust may often seem like “soft” work less urgent than business operations, it forms the basis for ultimate success. Trust determines the height any startup can climb. How well its foundation is laid in these critical early stages impacts sustainability for future scaling. A wise team leader should invest generously here.
Fixing Lack of Trust in a Team
Addressing a lack of trust in a team is a critical issue that can impact overall team performance and morale. Here are some steps to help rebuild and strengthen confidence in a team:
#1) Identify the Root Causes
Start by understanding why trust was lost. It could be due to broken promises, lack of transparency, poor communication, or perceived unfairness. Conducting anonymous surveys or one-on-one discussions can help identify these issues.
#2) Communicate Openly
Foster an environment where team members feel safe to express their concerns and opinions without fear of retribution. Having a team meeting on a regular basis, where everyone can speak openly, is helpful.
#3) Lead by Example
If you’re in a leadership team role, demonstrate trustworthiness through your actions. Be transparent, admit mistakes, and follow through on promises. Leading by example sets the standard for the rest of the team.
#4) Encourage Collaboration
Create opportunities for team members to work together on projects and discuss them at every meeting. This can help build trust and relationships and increase understanding and empathy among team members.
#5) Provide Support and Resources
Ensure the team has the support and resources to do their jobs effectively. This shows that the organization cares about their success and well-being.
#6) Recognize and Appreciate Your Team
Leaders acknowledge and appreciate the efforts and achievements of team members. This should be the topmost priority. Recognition fosters a positive atmosphere and shows that contributions are valued.
#7) Opt for Conflict Resolution
Address conflicts promptly and fairly. Encourage a culture where conflicts are seen as opportunities for growth and learning rather than as threats.
#8) Build Personal Connections
Encourage team members to get to know each other personally, which can help build empathy and understanding. Team-building activities can be beneficial for this.
#9) Set Clear Goals and Expectations
Ensure everyone understands their role, the team goals, and the expectations. This clarity can reduce misunderstandings and build a sense of shared purpose.
#10) Provide Continuous Feedback
Implement a system of regular, constructive feedback. This helps address issues early and reinforces the culture of continuous improvement and open communication.
Rebuilding trust takes time and requires consistent effort. It’s essential to be patient and persistent in these efforts. Remember, a team built on a foundation of trust is more likely to be resilient, collaborative, and successful.
The Road of Trust-Building is Long But Worth It
Establishing trust requires significant, continuous effort and commitment from leaders and team members alike over an extended timeframe. However, this investment is well worth the considerable long-term dividends of performance, innovation, satisfaction, and resilience realized upon reaching high trust levels. Great teams are built on trust above all else.
Though building trust may progress slowly, destroying it can happen rapidly. Major trust violations can dismantle years of team cohesion, causing lasting damage. Prevention is truly the best medicine, as restoring trust once lost remains challenging. Maintaining consistent trust-affirming behaviors from the start establishes durable cultural foundations for weathering future storms.
Trust is the soil that permits entrepreneurial teams to put down roots, grow tall, and bear fruit for many harvest seasons. Nurturing rich interpersonal soil may not seem directly relevant to immediate business outcomes, but it forms the very basis upon which all future success will stand or fall.
Teams with rooted trust thrive; those lacking trust undermine themselves. That is why trust must be pursued with diligence and patience to reap the immense rewards it cultivates in due season.
The wise leader plants the seed of trust deep, waters it consistently, and protects the sprout steadfastly until, over time, an expansive trust tree emerges, under which the entire team may flourish with abundance and sustainability for years to come.
