3 Ways to Grow Authentic Trust within your Organisation
Think back to a time when you heard or felt trust being placed upon you? Did you feel a burden lifted off your shoulders? Or did you feel a weight of guilt and expectation set upon you?
We have to give ourselves credit for the fact that we can sense authentic trust being invested in a relationship. Sometimes we just know if we’re in the hands of someone who wants to see us empowered or someone who wants to “test” our ability.
WHY SHOULD WE CONSCIOUSLY GROW TRUST?
Fostering good relationships through authentic trust, breeds psychological safety in the workplace, this ultimately leads to more productivity and openness to change. What is an organisation, if not an entity brought to life as a result of multiple relationships.
How then do we fertilize the soil and plant the seeds to grow trust between the teams and leaders? Relationships are a two-way street, therefore the effort for growth has to be mutual.
Which is why we consider the following three areas to grow trust:
(1) as an employee (accountability);
(2) as a leader (purpose); and
(3) together (communication).
ACCOUNTABILITY (Own It)
As an employee the main factor that contributes to how much our employer trusts us, is accountability. Accountability has two aspects to it:
- Commitment: saying “I’ve got this”. Meaning you will deliver as promised, on-time, within budget, etc; and
- Owning up: share when you struggle or fall short and seek for support (this also lends more weight when it comes to growing trust).
It may be difficult to start, but think of it as a practice of your authenticity and fertile ground for your growth. It’s better to own up and get support, rather than try to project a picture perfect image and suffer inside, because in the long run you’re actually building your value as an employee.
PURPOSE (Start with the ‘Why’)
When leaders begin with the end in mind/ bigger picture/ “WHY we’re doing what we’re doing,” the focus is on inspiring teams based on the impact or outcome we aim to achieve, instead of just another task to be completed.
The leader can do this by:
- Sharing: ‘Here is what we want to achieve..’ and ‘This is where we want to go..’; then
- Letting go: giving the team space to decide HOW they want to achieve the goals set and journey with them through the process by checking in to see how to support the team (this is different from micromanaging).
Admittedly it’s difficult to give up “control” of the end to end delivery plan as a leader, however no big win ever came easy. What helps is to keep in mind that a company with people who take ownership is a company that moves forward.
A company with people who take ownership is a company that moves forward.
BETTER COMMUNICATION (Open Up)
Having considered what each party can do in terms of building trust, it’s important to note that to truly grow trust it must be implemented together with improved and open communication. Open communication essentially means it goes both ways without judgement and helps both parties move forward clearly.
A few simple and recommended steps to creating open and clear communication:
- Listen: seek to understand before you can reply and ask more questions
- Communicate in a way that helps the other person understand rather than merely sharing information.
- Be Clear & Decisive: respond with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ when required, avoid ‘maybe’ as it lacks ownership.
- Provide Specific Feedback: clarify or share specific ‘high’ or ‘low’ points to measure better ways of working or communicating.
While all of these are ways to practice better communication, the point to remember here is to communicate FOR the person, rather than communicate TO the person.
It goes without saying then that in this time of invisible and inevitable change what we need most is — TRUST. What’s important to note is that it is never too late to start growing trust.
Watch our interactive video on Growing Trust here.
The article & the insights within have been collaboratively assembled by Arif Ahmed, Kathleen Fernandez & Isabell Melvin partners at BusyBuds Co an organisational growth consultancy firm specialising in the spheres of human, data & design.