“Who you are speaks so loudly I cannot hear what you say.” – Emerson
In both its presence and absence, trust is a critical and yet also often elusive quality of positive working relationships.
Being trustworthy is not a rigid or permanent state or a fixed personality characteristic; instead, trust comes from the consistent demonstration of certain behaviors.
Trust is first an inside job, and begins with you.
Julio Olalla defines trust as having three critical components: sincerity, competence and reliability.
Sincerity means delivering consistently with your intentions: people believe you mean what you say. This means acting and being in integrity with societal ethics as well as personal or organizational values.
Competency means having the competency or skills to do what you promise. You can deliver on your promises because you have the technical capacity to do so.
Reliability means fulfilling promises consistently, over time. You can be sincere and competent, but given a history of inconsistency, your reliability may be questioned.
Unintentionally, assumptions of insincerity, incompetence and unreliability can easily infiltrate working relationships. When these assumptions are dominant, distrust becomes the foundation upon which working relationships get built – not a particularly steady place to grow from.
How can you nurture trust in your working relationships?
- Start with you: assess yourself. How do you show sincerity, competency and reliability in your work and working relationships? How can you strengthen each of these behaviors or skills? When or where in your life are you insincere, incompetent or unreliable? How can you better align your action and words, build your skills or capacity, and keep your commitments?
- Design agreements that build trust: practices that will strengthen your sincerity, competence and reliability as well as support those behaviors in your team.
- Reward the behavior you want: recognize when promises are fulfilled to create a culture that praises sincerity, competency and reliability.
- Be specific in your requests of others, as well as your own commitments: what will be done, by when, and how will you measure success?
- If you find that you don’t have as much trust in someone else‘s sincerity, competence or reliability, see if you can turn your complaint into a request. Behind every frustration or complaint is a unfulfilled request: instead of complaining, you can be more productive in your feedback by making a request.
- Be brave and don’t swim alone: Opening a conversation on trust within your team or organization takes a willingness to engage in a different kind and level of dialogue with others. So don’t do it alone: ask for help, and be willing to learn from each other and from your mistakes.
In the Comments below, I want to hear from you.
From your experience, tell me: What works to build trust in a team?
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Before specializing as a professional coach in 2004, I spent more than a decade in leadership, management and program development for state and local government and non-profit organizations. Now I get to help leaders and teams have more clarity and ability to stand up for what's important in their work and in their organizations. Working with me, leaders and teams find more meaning and purpose, feel happier and more confident, navigate change and conflict, and work together better.
Great practical, applicable advice Hanna! As well as great links that support each step! I will definitely share with my clients!
Thanks Bernadette! I’m so glad if it’s useful and helpful for you or your clients – thanks so much for stopping by & for the comment!
Hanna I really like this post on trust on your blog. I like your comment that trust is an inside job – and some of the ways you have suggested for people to look inside for the ways to build trust. I hear often leaders say my teams don’t trust me and unfortunately the corollary so I wont trust them until they do. that circle is going no where as you know. I read that to get trust you must give trust and I have pondered that quite a bit. I think what you are saying is that to get trust and build trust be trustworthy by being authentic, aligned , consistent and of course say what you will do and do it – and rather than making up stories about the other find a way in. I like those practical ideas and it helped my pondering get more action oriented.
warmly
pat
Pat, thanks for your insight & comment! I’m of course pleased if these are helpful and practical tools for you!
Yes, we often hold back on our trust and wait for someone else to make the first move – which goes no-where as you say!
Instead of waiting, hoping or wishing for others to change, our best course of action is to: 1) start with ourselves, and take responsibility for what parts of distrust belong to us, 2) notice the impact of our actions and changes, and adjust based on our learning, and 3) consider what requests we want to make of others.
Happy to have your comment here, Pat – stop by again!!
I think building (and maintaining) trust on a team is like what you said, little deposits over a long period of time. Trust isn’t built on the big things usually but on following through on what you said you would do over…and over…and over. Great post!
Natasha, so true – trust is built over time through repeated consistent behaviors of competency, reliability and sincerity. Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for the comment!
Trust is certainly an inside job, and it’s important to remember your own “insides.” If you don’t trust yourself, that sentiment is picked up by others. I especially liked the comment about recognition. Recognizing others goes a long way to building trust and it takes a certain level of self awareness to consistently recognize the contributions of others.
Really enjoyed this thorough and rare look at what it means to be trustworthy. I find it interesting that we distrust others by default. To answer your question, the most common example of how I try to build trust with my team is by honoring what I say I’ll do. If I say I’ll do something I do it. If circumstances change, I still do my best to honor the original promise. Transparency and honesty is also key.
Great points, Denise – transparency and honesty are important parts of people’s trust in our sincerity, competence and reliability!
I might have been a little too strong in my statement about assumptions of distrust – it’s certainly not everywhere, so I hope that the suggestions are helpful ways of finding new ways of building and nurturing trust in our working relationships!
I really appreciate these points. I also think that for competency, not only do you have the skills, but also you know where to access the resources needed to provide the skills. Excellent thoughts!
Great point, Emily – part of being competent includes being resourced or able to access what you need. Glad if it was helpful!
Yes, we certainly are more likely to get what we want if we let people know what it is! Thanks for the comment, Heidi!