Building Trust Within Your Team: The Key to Success

You need to make sure lots of pieces fall into place for a business to succeed, but none are as important as the people you work with, and a good team is built on trust. Whether a small group working in an office or a large organization distributed around the world, the principles of team trust are the same: mutual respect, open communication, and the feeling of safety (e.g., job security) between employees and management.

With fear of an economic downturn in the air and the tech industry currently going through one of the largest employee shakeups in decades, putting energy into team trust has never been so important. Employees need to feel valued, confident, and secure in their roles in order to be successful in their work – and successful for your company.

To help you navigate this, we’ve put together a guide on how to build trust in your team, including:

Why Is Trust Important for Your Team?

Whether between employee and manager, customer and company, or individual teammates, our work lives are made up of relationships. And, just like with personal relationships, trust is vital for us to share thoughts and feelings, collaborate effectively, and feel secure.

When trust is achieved, employees are able to take risks, express themselves, and innovate in their work – all of which are vital to a strong growth enterprise. In low-trust teams, people feel held back by office politics and the feeling of being “left in the dark,” resulting in lower productivity, while when trust is high, productivity blossoms.

One 2015 study in the UK found that higher levels of average employee trust in managers could improve workplace financial performance, labor productivity, and product/service quality. Meanwhile, a 2017 study published in the Harvard Business Review revealed that people at high-trust companies reported 74% less stress, 106% more energy at work, 50% higher productivity, 13% fewer sick days, 76% more engagement, 29% more satisfaction, and 40% less burnout when compared with those at low-trust companies.

How to Build Trust Within Your Team

Trust is hard won, and to get the ball rolling in the workplace, you must look towards some time-tested team-building strategies. Team building isn’t just going paintballing one weekend; it’s an ongoing process that aims to create positive change within your organization. In this case, improving team trust.

Each team-building strategy we’ve outlined below focuses on one or more of the critical components of team trust: encouraging mutual respect, creating more open communication, and fostering a sense of security. Combined, these strategies can help develop a more productive and cohesive company.

The Structures of Team Trust

Good strategies are built on solid structures, which for team trust is all about clear and open communication. Your people need the right channels to keep their collaborative teamwork flowing, which in the era of digital work includes:

• Video Meetings – vital for everything from one-on-one feedback sessions to full-team meetings, video/audio conferences have become an integral part of most companies’ communications platforms.
• Interactive Whiteboards – some form of digital workspace where team members can operate in unison is vital for fostering collaboration and creating team cohesion. Make sure that it includes the features you need like inline images, video, or code.
• Tasks & To-Do Lists – a key part of team trust building is setting clear expectations and roles. A robust task-management program allows you to take a hands-off approach to managing your team’s workflow, giving them the space they need to shine.
• Group Chat – having everyone able to communicate openly as a group is crucial to improved team trust and general team building. Group chat channels can be used for formal project planning as well as more informal relationship building – they are the water coolers of the modern day for teamwork from home.
• Business Chat – having less formal conversational messages between team members is central to building interpersonal relationships. These, as discussed, go a long way toward improving team trust and improving overall productivity.

The last two channels are also a great way to improve transparency in your team, which is an integral part of trust building. “With Spike, I can be ultra-responsive, and I can also easily check others’ responsiveness to me. With deadlines and launches, that transparency conveys a lot of information,” says Guy Gamzu, an independent Angel investor.

Depending on your company, the importance of channels for your team trust program will differ. What’s more, this list doesn’t include the channels you’ll need just to keep the business running, like email and voice calls. However, having these communication structures in place is a great way to ensure your team trust-building has the best chance of success.

Team Building Activities You Can Do Today

With your communication structures and trust-building strategies in place, you may be wondering how to kick off this new era of team collaboration. We’ve put together some great team-building resources you can use right now to start improving team trust, whether working remotely, in-office, or a hybrid mix.

• The Best Team-Building Activities for Conference Calls: this covers seven amazing team-building activities that you can do on a conference call.
• Seven Ice Breakers for Team Meetings: start breaking the ice and building trust with these team meeting activities designed to help team members get to know each other.
• Get Active, Get Aligned with Walking Meetings: a guide on how walking meetings could just take your team to the next level.
• Create a Safe Environment with Effective Brainstorming Techniques: learn how you and your team can make brainstorming productive again – no more wasted meetings!
• Explore Emotional Intelligence Team Building Activities: learn how talking about your feelings at work can actually help boost productivity.

It’s Time to Start Building Trust in Your Team

Trust is vital for a strong team, and a strong team is essential for a successful business. Whatever size or structure your organization is, it’s important to ensure team trust is a core part of your company culture. This means building mutual respect, open communication, and a sense of security between employees and management in the workplace.

Even in the good times, team trust can improve productivity, reduce stress, increase satisfaction and reduce burnout at work. But now, with recession a real possibility, having trust in your team, and them having trust in you, has never been more important.