Trust in Teams
Leading a team of people can be difficult. Whilst there are many resources for learning how to be a good leader, including our very own leadership skills article here on MBM, we are focusing here on a specific aspect of great leadership – trust. Now, trust and respect go hand in hand. One almost equals the other, or at least they come as a package in most circumstances. Gaining the trust and respect of your team is arguably the most important step in being a great leader and achieving success for the whole team.
Synthesis
There are a few reasons why this is the case. The first is synthesis. Whilst synthesis is a fantastically satisfying word to say, it has real relevance here. When worker ants carry large sources of food back to their colony, you do not see one ant out of place. They work together, moving as one unit, synthesised. You’ll never find an ant that’s slightly bigger than the rest wearing a captain’s hat and ordering the other ants to carry in a certain way. This is something that is crucial to gaining the trust and respect of your team – do not do this!
Instead, bring your team together. It’s the job of the team’s leader to make sure everyone is on the same page, reading from the same hymn sheet and aiming toward the same goal. When this is achieved within your team, you will begin to move as one, as a unit. Ideas will flow better between people because everyone is not only trying to solve the same problem but in the same way, too.
Being able to trust your team is also a great testament to you as a leader. If you are in a place where you feel completely comfortable and confident in the abilities of your team, then you have done your job very well. If you feel this confidence in them, it means you have provided a team environment in which everyone feels heard, trusted and relied upon to put in their share of the collective effort. Make your team feel like they have been heard and you are halfway there. This also means you can have faith in your own leadership capabilities.
Trusting, having confidence in your team means they can have confidence in you and themselves and thus you can have confidence in yourself as a leader… it all intertwines back to this thing – synthesis. Moving as one unit. Trust and respect, mutually.
The Consequences of a Lack of Trust in Your Team
I am going to write it, the thing you are (hopefully… that or I sound like a bit of an idiot) all thinking… micro managers!
A lack of trust in your team will likely turn you into everybody’s worst nightmare. A micro manager. This is the specific cause of leaders like this. As a leader, you have a vision. A goal and specific way to achieve that goal that you require a team’s worth of assistance to reach.
The important part of that is thinking about it differently. A micro manager would think; “I have a goal to reach and a way to get there, but I must enlist the help of a team to help me reach it”. But, a trusting and respectful leader would think the opposite. Something more like; “I have been tasked with solving this problem and I must work effectively with a team so that we can collectively reach our goal.” – This! This is an effective way of approaching leadership and striving for their trust and respect.
No one wants to be attempting to work as part of a team and constantly have the ‘leader’ looking over their shoulder and questioning everything they do. This is not a team, this is an army with a sergeant that spits when he shouts. Not cool.
Don’t Be a Dictator
Dictatorships are never, ever, better than democracies in situations where it requires effort from all members to reach a goal. It simply does not work. If a team feels dictated to, rather than lead, they will sorely lack confidence in their own abilities. You, as their leader, have shown that you do not trust them by checking in on every little thing they do. Team members want to feel trusted enough to be left alone to do what was asked of them. When you put it like that, it really feels like a small thing. Of course, as you know, it is not. Micro managers are the bane of our lives as employees and it is such a small case of simply trusting us that would make all the difference.
Do not be a dictator. Be a leader.
The Parallel Team Building Scenario
Now, there are two approaches when leading a team. Neither of which are in your control, in most circumstances. See if you can spot them here:
The Film Set Example
My best example of leadership scenarios is on a film set. As a director, your job is to rally a large team of people behind one single, very specific and clear vision that you have had in your head since before these people were even involved. The luxurious position I now have is the ability to build this team from people I trust.
The most obvious answer to; ‘how do I trust and gain the trust of my team?’ is simply build a team out of people you trust. For a project I am currently embarking on, my screening process for getting people involved is pretty tight. Whilst tight, however, it is simple. If I feel I can trust you to conduct the role I am asking of you, then I will strive to gain your trust enough that we can work in unison with the rest of the team I already trust greatly.
I enlisted a couple of scriptwriters to turn this concept into a short screenplay. My brief: ‘please turn this seven-page novel-style story concept into a script.’ I gave these people character profiles, an in-depth overview of what needed to change between the concept and the script and a bunch of other contextual documents to provide as much platform for success as possible.
Trust in Scriptwriters?
The first, came back with a script of five pages, missing half of the important story moments and using the wrong character names. This did not show itself to me as the work of someone I could trust to bring on board and help make this vision come to life. The second came back with a script-format version of exactly what I’d written for the concept… yep… a full copy and paste. No trust there. I gave them feedback and little changed for both writers in their second draft.
Again this is a luxurious position because I can afford to spend the time finding and building a team I know that I can trust. This is not always the case. During college, our groups were chosen. I would always try hard to gain the trust of these people, even if we had never worked together before. It is much harder to work this way, starting off on a back foot almost, being thrown into a team you have no idea how to work with.
The first few steps of this process become about building rapport with those people. I could not choose to work with people I could guarantee could be trusted, so I had to do everything I could to turn the team I got into those people by trusting and respecting them and hoping this provided a platform for it to become mutual.
Did You Spot Them?
So, scenario one: You are able to go looking for a team you know you can trust before the project or task begins.
Scenario two: Your team has been provided and you must strive to gain their trust and respect as quickly as possible so that the project or task can be undertaken effectively.
First Scenario
The first scenario is always the better option. I tend to make a list of specialities that I need and then go looking for people based on that. One of my specialities for this film is fantastic visuals. I know I can rely on and trust the cinematographer that I am working with to pull through and achieve this for us. Take note of ‘achieve for us’. He is now part of the team.
As far as I am concerned, it is as much his project as it is mine. This is the level of trust you can choose to aim for when the option is there to build your own team. Something important to remember, however, is that if you have gone out and found your trustworthy team – trust them. Even worse than a micro manager, is one that promises not to be. ‘Kris, I would love for you to work on this project with me. Let’s build something awesome together.’ Once I have said this, I now cannot turn back and micro manage Kris, I have chosen him for a reason and therefore I must follow through with my promise of trust and simply trust him.
Second Scenario
The second scenario can be tricky. Hopefully, you land on your feet with an awesome team that is already way ahead of your plan articulation and is ready to start solving problems as a unit. This, unfortunately, is most likely not the case. A great way to rally your team behind a vision and help them trust your leadership is simply to be passionate and enthusiastic about what it is that you are doing. Upon talking about Zoom training meetings with my mum the other day, she said that she, like most people, despises training calls over Zoom. She then commented saying that she had just finished a day’s virtual course and loved it.
The lady hosting the course was incredibly passionate about what she was talking about, and it made mum feel the same. This woman got people excited about the use of formula vs. breastfeeding for newborn children (she works for the NHS). This is a topic I cannot imagine many people being excited about but she managed to rally some fifty-odd people into paying close attention and trusting that she knew what she was talking about.
An Overview
Tips for building a trust in teams:
1. Work With People You Have Worked With Before
This lessens the process of finding out whether said person is right for your team or not. I know Kris can do exactly what we need for this project because we have spent many hours working together. I do not need to spend any time building trust because I already have it. Better yet, it is already mutual. This is the ultimate ‘spend little time, get great results’ outcome.
2. Look for Qualities, Not People.
Let’s say you need, for this project; someone that is great at excel, someone who is a big picture thinker and someone who keeps everyone organized and structured. Don’t go looking for people and then seeing if they have these skills, look for the best excel user in the office, enlist them. Look for the biggest yellow-brain thinker in the office, enlist them. Look for the person in the office with the best filing system, enlist them. It is not necessarily the people that solve problems, it is their skills that do. If you can put trust in their abilities, you can put trust in them.
3. Build Rapport
When working with people I have not worked with before, I try hard to befriend them in a way that does not rely solely on work. This is really important for me working with actors, if I know I can trust their skills, all that is left is a friction-free workflow. Being on good terms with your team will make life so much easier for everyone. Strive to understand what makes each member of your team tick.
Tips for gaining the trust of a team:
1. Lead by Example
You would not expect a random stranger in the street to have respect for you without showing you respect them first. Team members are no different. You must reap what you sow. Set the example of trust and respect for all members. Allow them to carry out tasks without hindrance and make them heard among the rest of the group, trust me, they will begin to do the same.
2. Provide Feedback, Not Rejection
You have a concise vision of what is needed to achieve the goal. So, when someone puts forth an idea that will likely not work, explain to them what you like and dislike about that idea and how the whole team can move forward based on it. Knowing what not to do is just as important, if not more, than knowing what to do.
3. Be Patient
This is something I strive to improve in myself all the time. It takes time for everyone to be reading from the same page, allow this time. It takes time for team members to fully trust their leader, allow this time too. Being impatient and short with people is only going to irritate them. If there is one thing to take away from this read, it is this: you will not get what you do not provide. In essence, respect and thus be respected. Trust and thus be trusted. That is the key.
