An absence of trust in a team, department or organisation can soon develop into a toxic workplace, one where no-one really wants to be. Communication breaks down, collaboration stops and turnover increases. For teams, who need months together to perform well, it becomes very destructive. Trust between the team and its leaders (immediate and more senior) can have a great impact on its performance and its culture.
Types of Trust
Trust comes in three main types:
Competence
In this form of trust, your team trusts in your ability. Not necessarily that you have the same level of technical ability as them, but in your ability as a manager or leader – you’re able to listen, process the information, and make timely and sound decisions (or your ability to guide the team to making a decision).
Integrity
Integrity is built (and destroyed) by a leader’s actions over time. Do you respect your team’s decisions? Have you conveniently forgotten vital information or warnings you the team have told you, and ‘thrown them under the bus’ when having to explain the situation to upper management? Have you accepted the blame, rather than blame the team? Have you handled conflicts in a fair way?
Emotional
A genuine care for the wellbeing of others, and a willingness to help others without expecting anything in return. This can be reflected in the way you treat the team members when they are going through tough times, when they are ill, and so on.
Acknowledging the Situation
If you want to rebuild trust, an honest assessment acknowledgement of the situation is key. Trying to brush it aside or minimise it will just make the situation worse. This can mean some confronting and difficult conversations, and even feedback for you that you don’t want to hear. Look at it as a growing experience, and an opportunity to show you ability to lead and turn things around.
At this point, the most important skill to use is listening. Your team may be reluctant to tell you what they really think and feel, and may be really nervous about repercussions for speaking up.
Here’s some tips on handling this stage:
- Don’t get defensive, don’t try and explain yourself. You are there to listen.
- Don’t try and minimise their feelings and their thoughts.
- Do show you are listening. Paraphrase what they are saying to confirm your understanding of what they are saying.This shows them that you are listening to what they are saying.
- Acknowledge that something needs to be done. Invite them to a series of meetings where the right steps can be put in place to remedy the situation.
The Path Back to Trust
Studies have shown that it can take twelve months of visible, concerted effort to restore trust. The action that should be taken depends really on what has happened.
Competence
Admit that you’re not the smart person in the room. Ask for help from the team when you need it. They are usually the experts in the subject area. You can’t possibly know everything they do – you are paid to lead them, not be the expert (usually, there are some teams where this might not be the case). But also, look at areas where you have made mistakes and address these.
For example, are you making too many rash, spur of the moment, emotional decisions. If this is the case, learn about some decision making frameworks. Ask for more information from the team, get help from the team to make the decision, or even ask the team to make the decision (and back them when they do).
If you don’t know much about the business area, then take some courses, do some reading, and again ask your team! You don’t always need to become an expert, you just need to know enough to be able to understand their input to help your decision making, or to facilitate their decision making, or to represent them at leader meetings, etc.
Integrity
Acknowledge the situations where this has become an issue. Apologise, and then take action. Do some introspection and see why you felt compelled to handle the situation in that particular way. Start admitting mistakes when you make them – to yourself, and also to your team. And stop blaming them when things go wrong. If the situation arises where the team, or someone in the team makes a mistake, then look at it as a learning experience, and get the team’s help in putting processes in place that can prevent it happening again.
Emotional
Emotional trust can take longer to heal and restore. Reconciliation between you and the affected team members is an important step. If reconciliation is not possible, showing that you are genuinely sorry, and take steps to ensure it will not happen again will go a long way to restore trust. Remember you need to give people time for healing, you cannot force them to heal, nor can you force them to trust you again. Meditation with someone they trust may be helpful – having an impartial third party in discussions will give them an extra level of safety, plus it will show your willingness to listen and change.
Consistently checking in with the members of the team can helping not only to restore trust, but to building a stronger level of trust in the future. Given the experience you’ve all had, if you’ve been able to rebuild trust, they are more likely to tell you about issues before they become a big problem. You’ll be able to spot the signs of people being annoyed or unhappy with something or someone and take action before it becomes a problem.
Role-modelling the Right Behaviour
The people in the team quite often look to leaders for the appropriate behaviour, or at least expect it of them. Modelling the company and team values, handling situations appropriately, and importantly, showing a genuine interest in them as individuals and caring for their wellbeing. Most people want to be acknowledged for their efforts, big and small. And they also want to know that everyone in the company, including leaders, genuinely care about them.
Create a Feedback Loop
Again, if you’ve worked with Agile, you’ll know about feedback loops – mechanisms for team members to provide feedback to leaders. There are different ways to do this. In Scrum you have retrospectives, regular meetings where team members can provide feedback and suggestions on how to improve the way the team works, or raise issues that they feel are important.
Other options are regular surveys of the team or organisation, where everyone can provide their feedback anonymously if they choose. There are several survey tools out there, such as SurveyMonkey, SoGoSurvey, and Google Forms.
A feedback loop requires regular check ins with the team members, taking action, and then checking in again. By listening to them, taking action, and then listening again, you’re building trust, and a culture where everyone is constantly trying to make things better. Sometimes all that is needed is regularly listening to the team. For other actions, you might need to improve communication or try different forms of communication, or change team processes – for these sorts of things run experiments and see what the effect is. Most importantly, ask your team for their thoughts on how things are going.
The Benefits of Trust in Teams
Studies on the field of trust in organisations suggest a range of benefits – lower amounts of stress, fewer sick days, and burnout, as reported here. It is easy to understand why – everyone wants to work in an environment where they feel valued and appreciated, where they are able to do their best work and be recognised for it, and also to be able to contribute to improving themselves and the methods they use. Trust is paramount for all these things to happen.
Suggested Further Reading
The case study paper REBUILDING TRUST TOWARDS LEADERS: A case study in an international expert organization Helena Mustajärvi provides a great examination of a real case.
Photo by Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash.
