The Trust Walk is a popular training exercise designed to demonstrate the transformative potential of trust.  Participants are grouped in pairs.  One member of the pair is blindfolded and the other member guides the blind folded participant through an obstacle course.  The blindfolded participant has to fully trust the leader to make it through the obstacle course without seeing a map of the obstacles.

This is a great metaphor for how trust can work in an organization.  Leaders  guide employees through changes and at times, employees won’t see or understand the big picture so they have to rely on and trust the person leading. 

A lack of trust can surface in many different ways.  It can look like micromanagement, a lack of transparence, an inability to delegate, suspicion, disrespect or double talk, this is by far not an exhaustive list but it gives you an indication of some of the tell-tale signs. 

Tips for Building Trust that Lasts

When trust is impaired, it is difficult to build.  In some cases it will be impossible to rebuild and you will have to determine if this is the case.   In cases where trust can be built here are tips you can use to start your trust walk:

• Transparence – This goes both ways.  Employers sometimes withhold information because information is power.  These bosses neglect to understand that the right information is empowering and keeping employees abreast of needed information is not luxury.  Employees often cover up issues that managers need to be aware of.  They probably withhold information because they want to avoid an unpleasant outcome.  So where does the trusting behaviour have to start – with the leadership and the opening lines of communication.

• Consistence is important for building a track record.  Employees and employers will trust you if your behaviour follows a predictable pattern.  Consistence can refer to walking your talk or it can refer to establishing a pattern of behaviour.  Whichever the case, consistence is necessary.  A simple tip someone told me once that you trust people to be who they are so learn about who you are dealing with and trust them to be who they are.  This was a huge AHA moment for me.

• Confidence can instill trust.  This is true if employees are confident you will be fair and balanced.  Or if employees are confident that  you know what you are doing.   One tip for building confidence is as simple as being prepared.   Lots of people show up and try to wing it.  This is a detectable practice that whittles away at trust levels.

• Intentional, frequent and relevant communication lends itself to transparence.  Developing effective systems of communication is about, constructive, deliberate communication through established channels.

• Confidentiality – If you are perceived as being a gossip, you will undermine your efforts to build trust because you will be viewed as lacking integrity.

• All I have to say about authenticity is, “Get real if you are not already”.  Anyone can spot a fake.  Integrity can also lend itself to your authenticity. 

• Holding team members accountable – This builds the integrity of the team and it assumes that goals are clear and team members are being given the tools they need to succeed.

• Build an environment of mutual respect where differences are harnessed as positive instead of being viewed as concerns or complications.  To be more specific, acceptance and inclusion help to build mutual respect but so does the demonstration of developed conflict resolution skills.

• Attempt to understand your blind spots or the things you do unwittingly that can sabotage your efforts to build trust.  Talk to someone who will be real with you and make a list.

It takes a village to build trust, the team should be open to making changes within the dynamics of the team.  Once you build trust and, leaders will need to train employees how to think because they were probably in self preservation mode for so long that they lost the use of their creativity and critical thinking muscles. 

In closing I am leaving you with a quotation from an unknown author.  “Trust as a foundation for high performance means just that: trust comes first. When we try to make the plan before the trust issues are resolved, we deal with symptoms rather than causes and repeating problems just change names.”