Building Trust Inside Your Team

Mutual trust among all the team players creates congruency in thought, ambition, desire, and action. Teamwork bolstered by trust minimizes stress, eliminates misunderstandings, and saves time as you get more done.

When you have team members who trust each other, you do not need to have lengthy conversations. Instead, you can almost speak in shorthand. These qualities, in turn, create synergy – the phenomenon that enables team members to work together to accomplish much more than if they performed solo. 

When you display trust in others, showing them that you believe in them and have confidence in their skills and abilities to contribute to the team's success, they will trust and encourage you to use your skills and abilities to help reach the goal. Trust enables you to encourage other team members to use their skills and abilities to help move the entire team toward achieving its goal. 

Trust develops respect among team members. Respect is required for any healthy relationship, whether it is personal or professional. Teams are made up of people who bring very different skills and abilities to the workgroup; their differences contribute to the strengths and capabilities for reaching the assigned goal. When all the team members assume their appropriate responsibilities, mutual trust and respect develop. 

The team leader is responsible for recognizing each team member's skills and abilities well enough to know who would be best in each position. The team members must have confidence in the team leader to make team assignments and ensure that the right players are in the right positions. In a band, the leader assigns responsibility for playing the drum to the person who can best play the drum. The leader assigns a trumpet player the responsibility of playing the trumpet. In turn, the band members trust that the leader knows best and goes along with their direction. This kind of trust creates harmony, respect, synergy, and, ultimately, success. 

Working in a climate of trust reduces stress and enables energy to be used more constructively. If two people in a rowboat paddle randomly, they expend twice the energy to get half the results. But if they paddle in sync, they double their speed with half the effort. The exact same principle applies in any organization when team members work together with a high level of trust. They work together more efficiently and effectively because they know they can trust the other team members to do their part. Their loyalty grows, and their level of job satisfaction increases. When team members are doing their best to contribute to the team's success and enjoy their jobs, the result is always a higher level of success. 

Trust is essential to reach organizational goals, to get the job done. Like any worthwhile accomplishment, there are no shortcuts to establish trust; it requires ongoing and consistent work:

• Developing trust takes time, effort, and commitment.
• Building trust means doing what is right even when it is difficult to do.
• Trust means encouraging other team members even when you do not feel like it.
• Trust means always doing your best and not letting the team down.

These increased levels of synergy and success are not limited to the work team; they expand into every other area of the organization. Your organization makes a profit, you have job security, and you enjoy the personal satisfaction of contributing to it all.