The Ties That Bind: Building Trust and Team Building

The success of your team hinges on the individual members' ability to establish trust, develop relationships, and collaborate effectively.

Relationships develop over time.

But trust can be lost in an instant. A bad decision, a cross word, an unflattering look, all these aspects of people's everyday behavior can undo months or years of productive trust building.

With Relationships Comes Conflict

Your team's ability to build quality relationships is how well they can deal with the inevitable conflicts that will arise.

Ultimately, your team is only as strong as it's weakest relationship.

History proves, conflict and a lack of trust between key team members has brought entire teams and organizations to their knees.

Case in Point: Apple in the early 1980's. Steve Jobs' conflict with John Sculley.

In times of crisis: economic hardships, differences in opinions, personality conflicts can all bring out the worst attributes in people. When these people are leading others, this can be the death knell for your team, if not your business.

Times of crisis are also excellent periods to bring out the best in people; hardship can spark ingenuity and innovation.

It all depends on your people. What type of folks you chose and continue to choose to come work on your team.

Consistancy, stability, and preparation builds trust between people; trust builds great teams; great teams build great organizations.

When people trust the people around them to do the right things, in good times and times of crisis, your team can stay focused, productive, and effective even in the midst of danger.

Fear and lack of trust causes distractions, distractions breed slow, ineffective responses in important situations.

Building trust is the key component to building a strong team.

Trust Starts With You. . .

As a team leader, it is your primary responsibility to surround yourself and your team with good people.

If you're trying to build trust, the people you surround yourself with will have the capacity to trust and be trusted. Obviously these two concepts go hand and hand (but you'd be surprised to see how often they're overlooked).

A true leader understands their team's ability to perform effectively is affected by situations and dynamics outside the workplace.

The true nature of your employees is paramount to your team's ability to build trust and open free-flowing lines of communication.

Some folks will never accept this - these are not the types of people you want on your team.

Building trust throughout your team or organization does not happen overnight, simply because you've assembled a core group of good people. It is a process that takes time, sometimes a lot of time.

The rewards are well worth the effort and time.

People are used to the "top down" organizational chart. With ascending levels of "trust" and responsibility based on where you fall on that chart.

It's going to take some time to get people to reframe how they see your organization.

Building a Culture Of Collaboration

The results of building trust can be seen directly in the way people work together and collaborate.

Ultimately, that quality collaboration is the end result of mutual reliance: everyone on your team working together and trusting one another enough to achieve a common goal.

As a team leader it's most important to first build trust. Then allowing your team to develop and maintain it is your primary purpose. Ensure that trust happens, and your team will be successful.