5 Ways to Build Trust in Your Growing Team
Episode 715: Show Notes
A lot of our clients are currently in a space where they are wanting to add to their team but have concerns over how to make the right choices while maintaining the character and values of their company. We’ve recently expanded our team, and while it has come with some lessons, it has been an incredibly rewarding experience for our company and our team! In today’s episode, we unpack the five biggest barriers to trust, as outlined in an article by Fast Company called 5 Barriers To Break in Order To Build Trust Between Coworkers. We discuss the rules that all high-trust companies follow to ensure employees feel secure and confident in their work environment.
Growing your team can be intimidating, but with the right tools, you can do so in a way that is manageable and engenders a sense of trust amongst your team members. Tune in as we discuss how to foster an environment that is psychologically safe for employees, what you can do to ensure effective communication, how to make sure you hire and promote the right people, and much more!
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When The Executive Team Lacks Transparency
When you start adding members to your team, it can be tempting to focus solely on delegating tasks and not necessarily communicating the thinking behind those tasks: why they are happening, the goals driving you, and the bigger scope of what you are trying to accomplish. We, ourselves, have fallen into this very pattern with our own team on occasion. When we took on several new employees it was much easier for us to continue to do all the strategy work and then tell our team “Okay, here's the new plan” rather than allowing for more transparency and input.
While your team members don’t need to know every detail of your strategy and your business, you also don’t want to create a completely opaque executive level, where your team members are completely in the dark and don’t know anything. Having zero insight can cause your team a tremendous amount of fear, anxiety, and distress. And when they don’t have knowledge or insight they will naturally make assumptions to fill that gap. As a result, when things get even a little bit off-kilter, they’re likely to jump to conclusions about how things are faring, which can make people fearful for their jobs.
So ask yourself what level of explanation your team members may want in addition to the overall strategy conversation. Some team members will naturally ask more questions than others. But just because some people aren’t asking questions doesn’t mean they don’t have any. They may still be uncertain or fearful.
How To Ensure Effective Communication Skills
Understanding your communication skills, and those of your team is incredibly important for trust and cohesion. When managers lack effective communication skills it can cause some tricky issues among workers. It may well be the first time that you find yourself in a managerial position or the first time you’re training someone on your team to be a manager, but it’s worth seeking advice and support on how to optimize your communication skills.
A 2020 survey conducted by The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) found that 84% of respondents reported that poorly trained managers create unnecessary work and stress. And the most common skill that respondents said could be improved upon was effective communication. Organizations that have high levels of trust, intentionally develop their managers’ emotional intelligence, so that they gain the confidence and skill to build authentic relationships.
Why Employees Might Not Feel Psychologically Safe
Psychological safety is an integral part of building trust in the workplace. And it’s important that we define what psychological safety is before we try to foster it within our team. Researchers have found (somewhat counterintuitively) that psychological safety isn’t founded on creating a space where everyone is nice, and no one’s feelings get hurt. But is instead dependent on creating an environment where open dialogue can happen authentically. Essentially, psychological safety exists when everyone can share what’s on their mind without fear of judgment or retaliation.
The Dangers of Promoting The Wrong People
When an organization only values results (at the expense of all else), then it tends to reward and promote people who will do pretty much anything to obtain results, even if it means being disrespectful or cutthroat in the process. And being disrespectful and cutthroat are two out of the five attributes that an MIT study cites as undoubtedly leading to a toxic workplace.
High-trust organizations, however, hold people accountable for both results and living within a company’s values. Values that should, ideally, serve both workers and their employers. Teams at high-trust organizations will prioritize conversations about who is a good culture fit and will have managers who coach others about how to embody those values. Because they know that if they don’t hold people accountable for embodying their values as an organization, then that will negatively impact other team members.
We’ve done this in our business and, honestly, we could never even have guessed at the level of improvement we’ve seen from implementing these methods. It has been truly astounding!
When Employees Don’t Feel Seen
Before your team can build trust, they need to have respect. When colleagues go on their phones during meetings or answer emails instead of listening to the speaker, it not only creates a distraction for the person talking, but it also sets a bad example and is just plain rude. With so many more of our meetings taking place online nowadays, this type of multitasking has become more normalized (and more tempting!), which can contribute to employees feeling increasingly overlooked and unappreciated.
One way to understand the impact of this is through the phrase “bids for attention” which was first coined by Dr. John Gottman, who studied thousands of couples and their relationships. When you make a bid for attention it is essentially an attempt from one partner to another for attention, affirmation, affection, or any other positive connection. This concept can also be useful in contexts outside of romantic relationships, and can even apply to the workplace.
When people respect one another’s bids for attention during meetings employees will feel like they are respected, seen, and being listened to. Similarly, as a boss, it’s important to make sure your employees feel heard when they come to you with a problem, and not simply dismiss it because it isn’t a priority for you. Remember that when your team grows you actually can tackle more priorities!
Quote This
High-trust organizations intentionally develop their managers' emotional intelligence so that they gain the confidence and skill to build authentic relationships.
Highlights
When The Executive Team Lacks Transparency. [0:11:46]
How To Ensure Effective Communication Skills [0:15:55]
Why Employees Might Not Feel Psychologically Safe [0:20:08]
The Dangers of Promoting The Wrong People [0:30:42]
When Employees Don’t Feel Seen [0:34:45]
Today’s Guest:
Abagail & Emylee
The Strategy Hour Podcast
The Strategy Hour Podcast is a twice weekly show hosted by Abagail Pumphrey and Emylee Williams, the founders of Boss Project. Join us for semi-ranty biz conversations for service providers looking to ethically grow their agency businesses. Episodes cover everything from lead generation to leadership mindset to team culture and beyond.
Key Topics:
Building trust, Co-workers, Team building, Growth, Scaling, Communication, Values, Psychological safety
