3 Keys to Gaining and Maintaining Trust on Your Team

[Part 1 of 5 tips for empowering your organization to grow]

For any organization to be successful enough to grow, all teams—from the executive team to the janitors—should be trusted to manage their day to day activities. They are closest to the work, the ones who can identify and correct problems by the fastest and most efficient means.

Establishing a policy of trust is the first step—and should be the easiest—but it has to start at the top and work its way down through the organization to be successful. Maintaining trust however is much more difficult.

Here are three key goals to get you started...

Tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

All of the consultants and team exercises in the world will not build trust as quickly as Truth. The leaders should be the first to be open and honest about what must be accomplished and why. The leaders must drop all fear of looking weak and expose both their agendas and their emotions, and the leaders must trust the teams to manage themselves. If the leaders can do this, everyone else will follow suit—as long as there are no repercussions for doing so.

When you think of trust—what many books refer to as vulnerability—think of a tight rope. If the leader walks out there without a net, everyone else will consider doing so, but the first time a leader starts putting up nets—like those tried but not so true command and control techniques of yesteryear—the teams will run for their dugouts—now distrusting their leader more for starting an initiative and not following through.

Good leaders are never afraid to admit mistakes and apologize for them.

Everyone on a self-managed team is a leader.

Work in a glass bubble.

If everything is transparent—if your processes allow everyone to see what everyone else is doing, and there are real dependencies between all members of a team—trust will be more than a goal. Like peer accountability, it will become a natural transition.

Like processes, people can also be transparent. Have you heard the phrase "I could see right through him"? When someone you trust trusts someone else, it is easier for you to trust that person. This is because both trust and distrust are visible and infectious. If you want someone to trust you, trust them. If you distrust someone, they will know it, and they will distrust you because of it.

Trust first, and ask questions later.

My friend, Dave Scida, used to say, "Don't make-up movies in your head." It means: don't assume you can read between the lines, because you might be reading a story that was never written. If someone on your team—even someone who has disappointed you in the past—appears to be doing something undesirable, give them the benefit of doubt. Things are not always as they seem.