3 Keys to Building a Workplace Team that Works

“A team without trust is like a rocket without fuel”  — Mark Batson Baril

What I have found - in respected organizational culture research, my own research on high-performing teams and decades of working personally with teams - is that a cornerstone of what makes workplace teams work successfully is TRUST. Workplaces with a high-trust culture have been shown to have:

— 50% lower voluntary turnover

— Employees who are 3 times more likely to give extra on the job

— High-innovation in teams where collaboration and creativity flourish

Here are 3 keys to build up trust to an even higher level in your team.

Key #1: Lead by example.

Be trustworthy yourself, knowing that everyone’s watching you and learning from you. Observe your own behavior to see if you are demonstrating trust with your team members. Find the areas where you have less than ideal trust building going on. It often shows up in judgments, assumptions, and getting hooked (what does this mean??).

Ask yourself:  

• What would help me gain each person's trust? What is most important to them? How can I find this out?

• Do I listen to each member (not just the ones who speak up or with whom I share values)?

• Am I being sensitive to interpersonal styles that may be different from my own, and could I be making unfair judgments of those individuals, or simply ignoring them because I don’t understand them?

• Is there a deeper level of vulnerability that I can share with the team that would be comfortable for me and them?

• What are two thing I can do this month to learn more about what my team needs?

Key #2: Build open communication and respectful discourse within your team.

Open, honest communication engenders respect and trust. Research shows that people feel more likely to trust when they feel heard and understood. They’re more likely to engage, collaborate, and contribute their ideas to the team.

After all, this is why they’re here (hired, invited, or volunteered), so you want to do everything you can to bring out the best in them and not squelch their capacity to contribute (encourage that Creative Tension!).

Ask yourself: What is one action I can take next week that will help the team feel more heard?

Key #3:  Make conflict resiliency a priority on the team.

When there are negative outcomes or unmanaged conflict, there is inevitably an erosion of trust involved. The longer disagreement goes unresolved, the harder it becomes to return to normal productive relations - and to build up the trust that has been lost.

Normalize and build awareness around conflict: You must manage conflict or it will manage you! Being proactive about harnessing the power of constructive conflict is not only one key to building trust in your team, it also leads to open communication, collaboration, healthy change management, and innovation.

Ask yourself: How will I know that my team is really good at conflict? 

Read more about the background and approach to building more trust within a team. If you feel the need to dig deeper into Key # 1 (it can be a challenging one), feel free to schedule a conversation with us here.