What about trust? Building Trust at the workplace

Building trust at a workplace is critical, especially if you want to be successful as a leader, a manager or an employee. Without it, any member of an organization is likely to be less motivated. Thereby provoking a foundational threat to the company. When your colleagues trust you, they usually have the utmost confidence in the decisions you make. Even in uncertainties, your leadership will influence them because they expect you to do as you promised. 

As a leader, I have a long to-do list, but building and maintaining trust is always at the top of it as it does more than encourage my employees to get their tasks done in time. One of my critical pillars for building trust has been empowering my team by trusting them first. Through observation, I have found that they trust me back totally, and as a result, I have benefitted from their perspectives. Most employees do not like to be closely observed over the shoulder as they feel like you don’t trust them. Therefore, it is essential to let them work under minimal or no supervision. Always show support without being all over the place. Allow yourself to be reachable without pressure. This gives them assurance that you trust them to work on their own. 

Aligning what I say with my actions has been another way I have built trust. You may have heard employees saying that their view of an organization is based on what the manager’s say and do. When there is a contradiction between a leader’s words and actions, people will instinctively not trust you to follow through with commitments making the workers less committed to the organization. As a leader, you should always follow up what you say with actions consistently so that your employees do not have to wonder whether you will deliver. 

Every relationship is majorly based on honesty. A single lie can destroy a long-term relationship with no room for repair. No matter how difficult things may have turned out, I have always told the truth. It is often tough to tell people what they do not want to hear, especially during an organization’s harsh times but being honest with them while being sensitive to their feelings can encourage them to trust you even more. Be transparent when it comes to discussing and reviewing changes and updates so that every member of the organization does not feel left out; they should always be on the know about what is going on. This fosters lasting relationships built on trust. 

A few things will mean more to employees, like seeing issues that matter to them acted upon or seeing their hard work recognized. I always make sure I take immediate action on employee feedback and offer words of appreciation daily to strengthen trust. Make a habit of showing support and understanding to your team members even when errors are made.  

Building trust requires hard work, commitment and consistency; it cannot be built overnight. Nevertheless, it is an essential building block for a productive and successful workplace. Therefore, as we start the New Year, overcoming a lack of trust should be prioritized in every organization.