How To Build Trust Through Excellent Communications
As a leader, you need to be able to trust your team, and for them to trust you. When there is mutual trust, you give your team the confidence and authority to do their job at their highest ability. However, if there is no trust, your team may question their role within the company and you as a leader. It is more important than ever to learn how to build trust in your team. Excellent communications can help you build trust amongst your team.
Our CEO and Founder, Jessica Chen, recently hosted a Soulcast Media | LIVE event on LinkedIn. She interviewed Managing Director at ZRG Partners LLC., and author, Summer Anderson.
They shared tips and personal stories about how to build trust through excellent communications. This Soulcast Media | LIVE event is brought to you by our amazing sponsors at ZRG Partners, and the book Start Within: Better ROI starts with you.
ZRG Partners is a global talent advisory firm. As a recruiting partner, ZRG uses a universal process to identify talent that fits into your business needs, company culture, and global requirements. We use this analytical approach to identify executive talent for some of the world’s leading companies.
Start Within: Better ROI Begins With You is a business book for managers, leaders and teams to acquire knowledge, foster better team outcomes, and ROI.
Trusting Communications
Can you think back to a time in your career when you didn’t trust the leadership in your company? Or perhaps you felt like your boss didn’t trust you? Most likely, there was a lack of communication on one or both sides. When you have excellent communication, you are much more likely to trust and be trusted. Below are three ways to build trust through excellent communications.
1. Be Proactive
During the Soulcast Media | LIVE, Jessica shared how her biggest tip for building trust is to be proactive in your communications. Ensuring everyone is on the same page will help you build trust.
Consider the following:
- FYI’s – FYI’s, or For Your Information, emails are a great way to build trust with your coworkers and your boss. This is because you are letting everyone know where you are on a project or if there has been a complication. For example, if you get feedback from a client about the deliverable deadline, send your boss a quick update. Even if the deadline doesn’t affect your boss, keeping them in the loop is a good idea. This way, if they need to discuss the project with anyone else, they aren’t surprised to find out the deadline has changed.
- Communicate The Process – Your work process will differ from how others around you work. Because of this, communicating with them about how you work will give them an understanding of what you are doing. For example, if you are beginning a new project, you can send an email to your team saying, “I’m starting the XYZ project. This week I will be doing all of the research, next week I will create the assets, and then on Friday the 17th, I will be sending all of the assets to compliance.” When you share your process, you build trust because your coworkers and your boss know what you are working on and when.
- No Surprises – Your boss doesn’t want to be surprised in the workplace. Surprises can break trust, so you will want to avoid them. For example, your preliminary tests came back, and unfortunately, the prototype your team created isn’t meeting safety standards. This news can be hard to share with your superior. Instead of sitting on the information because you are afraid to share it, let your superior know right away. If your superior finds out from someone other than you, you will have broken the trust you’ve built.
Proactive communications will help you build trust and show your team and superiors they can rely on you.
2. Understanding
Whether you lead a team of two or 200,000, everyone within your organization needs to understand your company’s shared values. When your team understands why things are happenings or how decisions are made, they will have more trust in you as a leader.
Consider the following:
- What Drives Your Why – Does your team know the why behind what they are doing? For example, if a new initiative is being rolled out, have you explained why it is happening and its purpose? Maybe the goal is to streamline processes. Or the purpose could be to ensure production can increase. Whatever the why is, make sure everyone impacted understands. When you do this, you build trust. Your team now understands why they are implementing this new system rather than being left in the dark.
- How Decisions Are Made – Does your team know how decisions are made? Do they have a clear understanding of how the process works? If not, let your team know what goes into the process. For example, if you are rebranding and are deciding on a new logo, share the process with your team. It is much more reassuring to the people on your team to know the logo is changing, how it will happen, and when it will be implemented than coming into work and finding everything changed. Your team will appreciate feeling a part of the process.
- Clear Paths For Success – Once a decision has been made, does your team understand how to move forward with a clear path for success? For example, your team will now be implementing a new operating system. You may feel very confident about it because you’ve spent the last six months testing and trying out the new system. However, your team may not. Make sure you are giving them a clear path for success. Otherwise, they may feel like they can’t trust you or the company.
Understanding is a huge part of building trust. Communicating shared values so everyone can succeed will help gain your team’s trust.
3. Transparency
If you want others to trust you, you need to be transparent. A lack of transparency builds distrust. If your team can’t trust you, they won’t be able to perform their jobs to the best of their abilities.
Consider the following:
- Clear Communications – Clear communication is transparent and will help you build trust. If your communication is not clear, people may be confused about your intentions. For example, one way to ensure your communications are clear is to be direct. Say what needs to be said in a straightforward way instead of trying to tiptoe around a complex topic. You can say something like, “Jim, I need you to be on time for our weekly meeting. You’ve been late the last few weeks. When everyone on the team has to wait for you, we lose valuable time together.” Being direct will ensure the intent of the message is received.
- Share What Happened – Being transparent means sharing what happened. For example, share what happened if you missed the mark and didn’t meet a deadline. Don’t make excuses. For example, you can say, “Carol, I know I was supposed to send the meeting notes to you by Friday, and I didn’t. I’m sending them now. I missed the mark and underestimated how long it would take me to get them done.” When you own up to your mistake and share what happened, you build trust because you are being transparent.
- No White Lies – During the Soulcast Media | LIVE, a question from the audience was asked about whether or not a white lie is okay. Summer said no, white lies aren’t okay. This is because a white lie is still you holding something back, which invalidates your transparency and breaks the trust you’ve built.
Transparency will help you build trust with your colleagues and your superiors.
Building trust takes time and excellent communications. Being proactive in your communications, making sure everyone understands what is happening, and transparency will help you build a trusting work environment.
If you want to see the full LIVE version of this LIVE, check out Jessica’s Youtube Channel.
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