Is Trust in Teams Actually Important?

When it comes to measuring team performance, most companies prioritize hard numbers, like low rates of turnover or high profits, rather than more soft metrics, like trust or positive emotions. That doesn’t mean that more difficult to measure emotions don’t play a key role in mediating performance or success. Common sense alone can tell us that trust is important in a team, and every respectable business publication is discussing why trust is important in teams.

On the most basic level, if team members don’t trust one another, team development can be inhibited. This can lead to communication gaps, lowered productivity, stunted creative thinking, and a huge drop in morale. This may be why team building activities are so important, and they certainly have their place in a team leader or HR professional’s roster of tools. Although online team building or out of office retreats can be good team building activities, there are also other ways to build trust and maximize potential as well. But we should probably start by clarifying what trust is.

What Exactly Is Trust?

Ask a few people to define trust and you’ll get a slew of answers. It can mean you’re able to rely on someone, take them at their word, confide in them, or lean on them even when you can’t watch what they’re doing. There are 2 main types that we think of: practical trust and emotional trust. The first is knowing that someone is reliable in work situations, and the second is knowing you can speak to someone about sensitive subjects. Neither type can be built overnight. They both require repeated interactions, consistency, and good communication. You don’t need to be someone’s best friend to trust them or work well together. You don’t even need to like someone to be able to trust them, though it certainly doesn’t hurt.

And What Does It Do For Teams?

Trust affects a team by empowering individuals to create deeper interpersonal connections and betters professional outcomes for the entire team. It helps you both give and receive more meaningful feedback. Projects are simpler, efficiency skyrockets, burnout is easier to beat, turnover drops, everyone feels more engaged and energetic. And the list of benefits goes on and on. What happens if there’s no trust in a team is annoying at best, and paralyzing at worst.

Build It And They Will Trust

So, how do you build it into your team? There are multiple approaches, but some general guidelines can be helpful. The most important is allowing people to connect both through work tasks and outside activities. Team bonding activities, like a virtual escape room or a cooking workshop, can help people open up in a different way outside of the normal office confines. Make sure there is space for clear and consistent communication in every direction. That means allowing team members to speak freely with one another, and make sure everyone knows what’s happening in the company at large. Give people their autonomy: if someone is being micromanaged, they won’t trust their supervisor and they’ll feel as though they aren’t trusted, which quickly leads to a downward spiral. Last and not even close to least, don’t be afraid to acknowledge mistakes. When your culture allows people to admit they’ve done wrong, whether they didn’t proof a presentation or lost a big deal, it discourages a culture of error avoidance and encourages both growth and trust.

TL;DR

Trust is especially important in virtual teams. The connections and communication that arise more naturally when people work in a physical space together are gone, so make sure that you’re doing group and personal meetings at least bi-weekly. All teams need trust and accountability to function properly, so be sure to give everyone the attention they need. TL;DR trust in teams is important. We’ll be expanding on how to build better teams all across the blog, so check back here for more. We’re also giving you some important links on the neuroscience of trust And feel free to ask us to write about anything that strikes your fancy.