Are you trusting or not? Do you trust others easily? Do others trust you? How strong is the trust in your teams, in your business?
I heard a speech the other day where the person said that one of the greatest lessons that he learnt from his father was not to trust anyone in business. He said that this helped him in many situations in his business and he saw it as a great lesson learnt. I found this quite strange as I tend to come from a place of trusting people first and find that our business is built on trusting relationships, with our staff as well as with our customers and suppliers. I could see his point of view as we have had situations in our business over the years where our trust in people has been violated, but it has not changed my view of putting trust as one of our core business values.
For me, trust is the core of our business. This was why, when we had a breakdown of trust in our team at work, I knew that something had to be done to build the trust again as I could see a breakdown in relationships and a decrease in productivity. When there is a lack of trust, people cannot relate to each other in a way that produces innovative and strategic thinking.
Our brain is wired to detect threats – this is our primal instinct. When we are in a state of distrust, we feel threatened and we feel we need to protect ourselves. Our amygdala, our reptilian brain, located deep in the brain's medial temporal lobe, causes us to release cortisol and adrenaline in our body which heightens our awareness and we go into a state of fight, flight, freeze or appease. Have you ever had a situation where you feel as though you cannot think, or move? It feels like your brain has shut down. This is our body going into an amygdala hijack which is our protection mechanism.
However, if the interaction feels safe and we feel comfortable, our body produces oxytocin and dopamine, both “feel good” hormones. These make us feel open, relaxed and help create a state of trust. Our executive brain, the prefrontal cortex, opens up and allows us to think more clearly, being able to access empathy, innovation, and higher decision making. We connect with others more deeply and are able to trust the other person.
Trusting ourselves first is key. We need to trust ourselves before we can trust others. To trust ourselves we need to understand ourselves first, know our strengths and weaknesses, what are our core values, what are we good at and what are our trigger points. How do we react in various situations? When are we at our best and when are we at our worst? Doing personal work on ourselves is key to trusting ourselves first.
So how do we build trust? How did I build trust in our team again?
When I think of building trust I go to the acronym of TRUST: Transparency, Relationship,
Understanding, Shared Success and Truth Telling (Judith E. Glaser, Conversational
Intelligence). This is so easy to remember and I have used it a lot when I am questioning any trust issues in my business or relationships.
Transparency: one needs to be open and transparent in order to build trust. We cannot be hiding things from others, withholding information, only giving people what we think they need to know. In business, we may want to hold onto information, as we think by sharing it, we are giving up our power. However, by doing this, we isolate ourselves and people start to distrust us.
In our company we had a situation where one of our managers withheld some important information from me. She thought it best to deal with it herself, which is encouraged, but it got to a point where everyone in the office knew the situation had got out of hand and that it needed to be reported to the CEO, which is me. The manager did not realize it, but by not being open and transparent, she lost trust and respect from her colleagues and subordinates, as well as from me.
Often we will opt to withhold information, either by trying to hold onto power or by being afraid of exposing ourselves. However, by being open and transparent, we actually gain power as people believe and trust in us more.
Relationship: To build trust we need to put relationship before task. In business we are so task driven that we often focus on this at the expense of our relationships. This also happens when we have deadlines to meet. However, I have found that if relationships are put before tasks then the tasks actually become much easier to achieve. When my staff meet with our customers, the focus is first on the relationship, establishing that trust with them, before getting down to business. When you go into a meeting, ask a few questions first to show you are interested in the other person. You may think this is a waste of time or its small talk, but that small talk helps to create a bond and builds trust, which makes doing business so much easier when you get down to getting the task done.
Understanding: this is not about understanding the other person, this is standing under the other person’s reality. To build trust with another person, we need to be able to step into their shoes and see the world through their eyes. If you do this, you really get to understand the person which helps to build trust.
However, this may be a very difficult thing to do. We make judgments about others without really knowing the other person’s whole story, where they come from, what has happened in their lives and the reasons they are doing what we may be judging. A person comes to the conversation carrying their own life lessons, interpretations, memories and stories; all of which may be very different to your own. Think about how you can suspend judgment, think if you have a right to judge that person, stop all your thinking and be open to listen to the other person with an open heart.
Shared Success: So often we like to take the glory for successes that we have achieved. However, in order to build trust in your team, the success needs to be shared and people need to be acknowledged and celebrated. It’s not about your success or their success, it’s our success. Moving from “I” to “We” shifts the trust. Very rarely do we achieve success solely on our own. We usually have received some input or help along the way, even if it’s just the inspiration. Instead of wanting the success all to ourselves, which our egos often want, we need to acknowledge everyone who has been part of the success. By acknowledging others we gain their trust and build stronger bonds with others. People trust us to not take the glory for ourselves alone, but that we are happy to share the success with others. This makes us a bigger person to others; a more generous person, a more trusting person.
I realized in our business that we do not celebrate success enough so we introduced “Moet Meetings” once a quarter, where successes are shared and celebrated – everyone looks forward to them.
Truth Telling and Testing Assumptions: Yes, we need to tell the truth in order to build trust. But we also need to test what assumptions we are making about another person, see where the reality gaps lie and then work on bridging the gaps. All too often we make assumptions about other people, but if we are open with them, listen intently, ask discovery questions and become genuinely curious, then we can bridge those reality gaps. We may think that a person is distracted or not giving of their best at work, when in fact they may be going through a personal problem at home or they may be afraid to ask for more information or training to achieve their task, in fear of looking incompetent. The best way to do this is to say: “What I am hearing is…” Reflect back to the other person what you have just heard them say, using their own words. If what you assumed they said and what they actually said is different, then you can close the reality gap.
A little while ago my husband and I were having a discussion with our daughter who is 24 years old and at college. I said something to her and her reaction was not what I expected. She got extremely defensive, upset and it turned into a heated argument. Later, once everyone had cooled down, we were able to listen to each other and realised that what she heard me say and what I had actually said were very different. By understanding the gaps in our interpretations and realities we can continue to build trust in others.
So, what happened in our business when we had a breakdown of trust? I ran a workshop with the team where we looked at the TRUST acronym. I taped a big circle on the floor and divided it into 5 segments, one segment for each of the words in the Trust acronym. We walked through each segment discussing what it meant and they stood in the segments where they personally felt was their strongest segment and where they were weakest (or needed to improve). I asked each team member to then stand in the segment where they thought the team was strongest – most of them stood in the relationship segment. I then asked them where the team was the weakest and most of them stood in the Shared Success and Truth Telling/Testing Assumptions segments. We discussed what the team was good at, what it was not good at, where we could improve and what we could do about it. Because of the transparency, openness and willingness to put relationships before task, we “rebuilt” our team. Everyone stepped out the meeting having greater respect for each other, tools to help them build trust in their relationships as well as the commitment to put the past behind them and step into a new reality as a team.
When trust has been broken it can be repaired as long as people are prepared to move from a place of “I” to “We” and from “protect” to “partner”. Then great things can happen.
3 Takeaways:
1. We need to trust ourselves before we can trust others. Know your strengths and weaknesses, your core values, what you are good at and what your trigger points tend to be.
2. Build trust by being open and transparent – move from withholding to sharing of information and ideas. Put relationships before tasks – work on building relationships with others first before getting down to completing the task. Doing some small talk beforehand and getting to know the person builds trust and makes getting the task done much easier. Step into the other person’s shoes to truly understand them – suspend judgement of others, listen to them with an open heart taking into account where they are coming from. Share the success – recognise others who have been part of your or the team’s success and acknowledge them. Test assumptions you make of other people – reflect back what you heard them say so there is no misinterpretation and assumptions being made.
3. Move from “I” to “We”, from “protect” to “partner”. Go through the framework in the article and ask if you come into a relationship from an “I” perspective or a “We” perspective. Move from trying to protect what you do and know, to moving into a shared partnership with others.
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