How To Build Trust To Create a Healthy Team Culture
![Stock Adobe](https://cdn.statically.io/img/www.rollingstone.com/wp-content/themes/vip/pmc-rollingstone-2022/assets/public/lazyload-fallback.gif)
A healthy team culture can make the difference between a dysfunctional organization and one that runs efficiently and consistently delivers a high level of performance. And while there are many factors that influence the health of a workplace culture, perhaps none is more powerful than trust.
Healthy cultures are built on mutual trust between individuals, teams and leadership. Trust leads to individual and team empowerment by allowing people to perform at their highest level within their area of expertise, and it’s a necessary ingredient for effective communication and collaboration. If you don’t trust your team, or they don’t trust each other, they won’t be able to do what’s necessary to ensure all your clients are satisfied. In order to get your clients to trust you, you first need a healthy, trusting work culture.
So, as a business leader, how do you go about building trust in your team? First, it’s important to recognize that trust needs to run in both directions to be effective, and that means it needs to exist at every relationship level within your business — you need to trust your team and the individuals who make it up, and they need to be able to trust you and each other.
Second, as you’re likely already aware, trust needs to be earned. While it’s natural to extend some unearned trust in a relationship initially, over time, a person either proves that they are worthy or unworthy of that trust. So how do you earn trust? It starts by demonstrating care, not placing blame, and most importantly, following through on your word. Treating them with compassion and respect is critical in building trust.
Trust Builds Empowerment
Trusting your team empowers them. An MIT study showed that employees who feel trusted by their employer are 260% more motivated to work. This is one of the most important lessons for entrepreneurs to learn, and it’s something many of us struggle with at some point in our business development because it can be hard to let someone else take over tasks that are important to you. However, if you don’t trust your employees, you create a system of disempowerment, essentially tying their hands.
Over time, this can create a culture in which people feel unable to make decisions or solve problems on their own because they’re afraid to fail. The more you trust them with, the more you’ll find they’re capable of, and they’ll be empowered to solve problems, develop solutions and innovate to produce even better results.
Build a Culture of Transparency and Honesty
Whenever you trust people with a task, mistakes will happen. That’s okay as long as you’re transparent with each other (and with your clients). You want your team to be comfortable admitting that they’ve made a mistake and seeking help from leadership or from their teammates.
The Rolling Stone Culture Council is an invitation-only community for Influencers, Innovators and Creatives. Do I qualify?
This may not come naturally to many people, since many workplaces have a culture of blaming, which can cause employees to feel afraid of admitting mistakes and even hide their mistakes rather than fixing them. That means you must create a culture of transparency and honesty where admitting mistakes is encouraged and problem-solving is collaborative. What does that look like? It requires a no-blame environment:
Create a No-Blame Environment
It’s very important to have an environment where people are able to make mistakes without fear of blame being placed on them. As a leader, it’s important to understand that the majority of mistakes are not the fault of the individual who made them — rather, they arise from unclear instructions or expectations, a lack of training or a lack of strong systems and processes.
Many business owners are quick to acknowledge the value of failure in their own entrepreneurial journeys but are just as quick to place blame when one of their employees makes a mistake — a failure. I’d encourage you to cultivate an attitude towards mistakes as opportunities, just like your own failures.
Mistakes can be a very positive thing from a business standpoint because they allow you to assess how they occurred and improve the systems that led to that mistake, whether that’s changing the way something is organized, providing better training around a specific topic, or ensuring communication happens more effectively in the future. This is especially important in the realm of training and development, because when you build systems, you need to train your team in how to use them, or more mistakes will happen. And when they’re struggling with something, whether they can’t understand or the system isn’t working for them, you want them to feel comfortable voicing that and knowing that you will follow through on making any necessary changes.
Stay Humble
While you don’t have control over every aspect of your business’s culture, you do have control over how you lead it, and one of the best ways to build a culture based on trust is to practice humility as a leader. That means owning up to your own mistakes and taking the time to appreciate the value that each person brings to your team. Pride only gets in your way of leading effectively, and it makes you less trustworthy in the eyes of others.
Remember that trust is built on relationships, and you’re never above connecting with your team members. Take an interest in them personally, then take their interests into account when you make decisions — doing so can create trust and loyalty.
Final Thoughts
As business leaders, it’s imperative to recognize the transformative power of trust within our teams. If your culture is built on trust, you can empower your team to perform their best and create gateways of communication to improve your processes. It’s important to be intentional and proactive in taking measures to build trust with your team. I mean, who doesn’t want to have employees who are 260% more motivated to work? That statistic is hard to beat!