Is Your Team Costing the Company Money?

Three Trust Indicators

You can talk all you want about time management tactics, learning how to facilitate critical conversations, and mastering conflict resolution.

But unless your team enjoys a high level of trust among its team members, none of these wonderful skills will help your team’s performance.

In fact, your team may be costing your company a lot of money.

Signs of an Unhealthy Trust Quotient

Here are some signs your team may have an unhealthy (and therefore costly) trust quotient.

• Everything takes longer and seems harder for team members.
• People don’t do their best work.
• They easily become disengaged and withdrawn.
• Their confidence in themselves and others on the team diminishes.
• They have feelings of complacency or even fatigue.
• They are not as prone to connecting with each other or sharing information.
• Grousing about the company may be a common theme.
• Some might even question if the enterprise is a right fit for them.

What It Is Not

These signs are not to be confused with team overload, where a company over-commits, and its results are felt throughout the organization with inappropriate workloads and deadlines. No, this is not overload.

What It Is

This is a falling away from former collaboration. It’s an unwillingness to participate by speaking up. It’s a reticence to take risks together, and an uncomfortable commitment to the status quo. You may see things like escalated emotions, turf issues, abdication of responsibility or micromanaging, and certainly some hidden agendas.

As you consider what comes with low trust, you can easily deduce what this means to the company.

What do you do when you detect signs that your team needs to build more trust?

You need to determine the source of this lack of trust so that you can rectify it.

According to researchers Dennis Reina, PhD; Michelle Reina, PhD, and David Hudnut, MIA, renewing trust can result in greater accountability, effectiveness, innovation, respect, performance, profitability (need I go on?). The researchers have developed a Team Trust Scale that measures three areas: trust of character, trust of capability, and trust of communication.

How does your team rate?

I have taken the researchers’ indices of a high level of trust in these areas and paraphrased statements with which you and your team members can rate yourselves.

Using a scale of 1-5, with 5 being highest. How do you rate?

Trust of Character

• I manage expectations
• I establish boundaries
• I delegate appropriately
• I encourage mutually-serving intentions
• I keep agreements
• I am consistent

Trust of Capability

• I acknowledge people’s abilities and skills
• I allow people to make decisions
• I involve others and seek their input
• I help people learn skills

Trust of Communication:

• I share information
• I tell the truth
• I admit mistakes
• I give and receive constructive feedback
• I maintain confidentiality
• I speak with good purpose

How did you do? And where do you need to shore up first, in order to make biggest impact in up-leveling team trust?