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Dear Vibrant Young Mind,
The workplace is where people with different skills, ideas, and diverse thought processes work under one roof towards a common goal. A factor that will help us work coherently is trust. It helps build stable work relationships, a productive environment, and a symbiotic work culture beneficial for the organization, its employees, and its customers.
How can you define trust?
Take a few seconds and think of an incident which you can describe as an act of trust. Could be by a family member, a friend, a colleague, or anyone who had your back or nudged you in the right direction.
Say you and your team are all set to deliver a presentation may be at college or work. All of a sudden, you became anxious and unable to kick start the presentation. Your team member comes forward to help you understand your situation even without asking.
● How does it make you feel when you are around this person?
● Which act of this individual makes you feel they are trustworthy?
● Is that action a quality you can say when you describe a trustworthy person?
When you say you trust someone, you feel a sense of assurance. It could be how they approach a situation, how competent they are, how they make the right decisions, or whether they have your back. At your workplace, trust is the feeling of reliability placed on a person or an organization’s ability to act with integrity, efficiency, and with consistency.
Simply put, It is an asset, ‘You know it when you feel it.'
Trust begins with you – Build your credibility
Trust starts by creating the right atmosphere, one of reliability and principle. Taking the necessary steps to build your credibility will have a positive impact on your team. When your actions are predictable, you are seen as trustworthy. You display this credibility by establishing these core elements; right intent, commitment, competence, and consistency.
Right Intent
The intention of establishing a trustful work culture is to create an atmosphere where people;
● Feel accountable for their actions
● Take ownership of tasks
● Understand the processes of an organization,
● Have the freedom to make their own decisions with integrity,
● They adopt a growth mindset.
● Work with dedication and conviction
Understanding the intention is vital to set the necessary transparency that establishes trustworthy relationships. And when trustworthy relationships are formed, people feel empowered to give their best.
Commitment
Commitment to your role, your task, and making sure you see it through, is a quality that equates you as reliable. Commitment starts with taking responsibility and ownership of your role in your organization. When you say you are committed to your roles and responsibilities, it means you are willing to put in the effort to make it work. In simple words, it means your organization believes that a task/role when assigned to you, will be completed because you will make sure it is done. This can only be done when you embrace the team/organization's goal as your goal.
Competence
Your skill and your ability to perform are one of the more trusted attributes in the workplace. The service of a skilled professional is sought after repeatedly. The trust in that professional’s ability to perform surpasses most of the other qualities that a person may carry. Your proficiency is a way to show you are useful to your team/organization. So sharpen your skill, have a growth mindset and let learning and acquiring knowledge be an ongoing process. Remember that what you bring to the table speaks volumes when it comes to trust.
Consistency
Action speaks louder than words. Apart from following up with what you said, consistently displaying this action is something that sits strongly with your team/organization. Give your team the feeling that you can be counted upon. That your performance, your opinions, your decisions, whichever it may be, it can be trusted that you will deliver every single time. It is easy to deliver once, maybe twice, but every single time might sound difficult. Although, once you persevere to maintain that streak, consistency merely becomes a habit. This non-verbal act of stability not only builds trust but also respect in your workplace.
Importance of workplace trust
When a person puts their trust in you, it very subconsciously aligns you to feel responsible.
To you, it means they have put their confidence in you and you wouldn’t want to let them down. A trustful work culture brings a subliminal change which in turn results in a productive environment. Effective communication, mutual respect, and a growth mindset are established.
Trust is a two-way street
Trustful work culture is one in which people hold themselves accountable for their actions. Where they take responsibility and ownership of what they do. Although trust isn’t merely a decision, it is a process. A process that involves calculated risk and careful assessment. Vulnerability is only human and so trusting a person will not come easy. Gaining another’s trust starts with you. You place your trust in that person as a willful decision to allow that person to shine in their way. There is a chance of a backfall but a chance to find a trustworthy person or a productive team outweighs it.
A team is not a group of people that work together. A team is a group of people that trust each other. - Simon Sinek