What’s a Lack of Trust Costing Your Team?
Do you trust your boss? Does your boss trust you? Do you trust your team members? Do they trust you? What about everyone else, do they trust each other?
If there’s a lack of trust in the workplace, the environment can breed ineffective teams, poor results, quiet quitting, and even toxicity. Anecdotally, we all inwardly cringe at the idea of being micro-managed or feeling like we constantly have to prove ourselves as trustworthy (an issue that may be particularly relevant now, with the rise in remote and hybrid work).
However, there are many studies proving that trust in the workplace overwhelmingly creates an environment more conducive to success on all levels. It’s astonishing to dig into the positive impact a trusting environment has on worker satisfaction, retention, and overall productivity.
Studies by Paul J. Zak, featured here in Harvard Business Review, showed that compared with low-trust companies, people at high-trust companies report:
74% less stress,
106% more energy at work,
50% higher productivity,
13% fewer sick days,
76% more engagement,
29% more satisfaction in their lives,
40% less burnout.
I personally find these numbers staggering. They so clearly point to the need for building trust in our work environments, not only for the bottom line, but for the health and wellbeing of all employees.
What is the Financial Cost of a Lack of Trust?
Here’s how trust and the bottom line are linked:
Employees operating in an environment that lacks trust are more likely to leave. A high turnover rate becomes extremely expensive. The Association for Talent Development found that the average training cost per employee is $1,252, and that employers dedicate an average of 33 hours of training time to new hires.
Of course, this isn’t the whole picture. The search for a replacement can take months, and while HR is busy hunting for a new person, others on the team are taking on the workload of the missing role, resulting in higher stress levels and potentially building resentment (anyone who’s ever had to cover two roles at once without a raise knows how challenging this can be).
The study also didn’t factor in losses in project momentum, dropped balls, and the demoralizing situation that can arise from high turnover.
Employees operating in an environment that lacks trust are less engaged and productive. Gallup recently conducted a study around employee engagement, finding that:
Disengaged employees have a 37% higher absenteeism rate, resulting in 18% lower productivity and 15% lower profitability.
Disengaged employees cost their company the equivalent of 18% of their annual salary, though other sources calculate losses up to 34%.
Disengaged employees are correlated with customer complaints and client disengagement.
Can you really afford the high cost of missing trust? I’m guessing that not many businesses can, yet Gallup also estimates that an average of 17.2% of any given organization’s workforce is actively disengaged.
What Measures Can You Take to Build Trust?
The numbers I included above are usually shocking to leaders, who often say, “Okay, but how can I actually tell if my organization is lacking in trust? What does it look like on the ground?”
Good questions. Some of the symptoms might look like:
Low energy and initiative. People tend to over-promise and under-deliver, and excuses abound.
Turf wars and unhealthy competition. You might notice that people manipulate or distort facts to get a leg up, or maybe information is withheld to gain an advantage. New ideas are openly resisted and stifled.
Defensiveness. Mistakes are covered up or covered over. Getting the credit is important, and badmouthing is all too common.
An active, inaccurate grapevine. There is an abundance of gossip and “water cooler” talk. Numerous “meetings after meetings.”
Unproductive tension, sometimes even fear. People pretend bad things aren’t happening, or they’re in denial. There is high turnover, or talk of it.
These kinds of dynamics are toxic for workplace health and create an extremely uncomfortable environment. People simply don’t trust each other if they constantly feel under threat.
Strategies for Building Trust
By all accounts, having a healthy dose of trust in your organization is priceless. Try following this T.R.U.S.T. model to restore trust when it’s missing, or start strong and use these principles to create trust in the beginning of a relationship:
T - Test Assumptions. When we experience a lack of trust with someone, we often lose a sense of what’s objectively true. We create movies in our minds about the person that reinforce the threat and increase anticipation of a lack of safety in the future. By testing our assumptions and the conclusions we draw, we come back to what’s really happening in the moment versus what we fear might happen in the future.
Questions to consider:
What movies am I making up in my mind to protect myself from future threats?
How can I analyze what I anticipate might happen (what I'm afraid of) and what’s actually happening in this moment?
Is there any other possible outcome than the one I fear the most?
R - Relatedness shifts the perspective from a “me” to a “we” mindset, and from a place of disconnection to connection.
Questions to consider:
How can I establish connection and rapport?
If there is disconnection, tension or upset, how could I extend trust by making the first move to have a connected conversation?
How can I call out collusion or groupthink and create opportunities for relatedness between people and teams?
U - Understand Perspectives. This requires deep listening and openness to seeing all sides of a situation. By taking steps to understand another’s experience and point of view, you can activate empathetic areas of the brain.
Questions to consider:
How could I step into the other person’s shoes and understand their point of view?
How might I use uncomfortable conversations as a way to more deeply understand all sides of an argument and facilitate connection?
S - Share Goals. Take time to discover what you mutually care about, and work together to co-create a definition of success. When you have a deeper why that is shared, versus yours alone, you can more easily create conversations to discuss challenges or conflicts without fear of retribution.
Questions to consider:
How can I form a shared vision for success with others?
Where do I need to release my attachment to being right, and open up to listening to find the win-win?
Where are the disconnects between my vision and what others see? How might I communicate more effectively and bridge those differences?
T - Transparency builds more connection and reduces feelings of threat and fear that come up in stressful work situations. By having candid, clear and kind conversations, you begin to calm the amygdala and activate the prefrontal cortex for a higher executive functioning in the brain, stimulating rational thought.
Questions to consider:
How might you be more open and transparent in a way that serves to diminish fear and feelings of threat in others?
How can you foster clear, candid, and considerate feedback in your organization?
In what ways could you show more respect and appreciation of others?
As you probably know, building trust between two people can take many conversations and some time to work through challenges. It's even more complex when you are trying to shift trust within a whole organization, and it obviously doesn’t happen overnight. It’s an intentional process that involves the willingness and buy-in of many people, especially leadership and those who set the cultural tone at the organization.
When I work with my clients on building more trust, I describe it as an emotional bank account. There are credits and debits. Trust is built through a million micro-interactions, not just one conversation or one interaction.
Commit to this for the long haul and it will not only save you time, money and energy, it just may result in creating more joy, fulfillment and satisfaction for you, your teams and their families as well!
Go forth, and start building trust among your team members! It all starts with you.
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Kim Carpenter is a the creator of People at the Center's bespoke training programs for purpose-driven leaders and teams who want to create cultures where people and profits thrive. Through her one-on-one and small group coaching programs, Kim supports individuals to align their career and their vision for a life of meaning, purpose and joy. Subscribe to the People at the Center newsletter to receive notifications when we post new content.
