Building Trust
You Go First
Not surprisingly, one of the reasons it’s hard to build trust is because people don’t trust each other in the first place. There’s often an unspoken deadlock where no one thinks they can make the first move. It’s easy to break this deadlock: you go first.
While it may feel uncomfortable to make the first move, doing so lets you set the tone of the relationship. When you put yourself or your position at risk, people can see that and they will value what you’re attempting to do. When you go first and make a gesture of trust, it’s natural for others to reciprocate. Once this happens, the deadlock crumbles and you have the opportunity to build momentum and start a “cycle of trust”.
Mutual Respect
Of course, in order to truly build trust, you can’t just go through the motions. You have to actually respect the other party — and they have to respect you. Mutual respect is the foundation of trust.
If you are a manager, you are well positioned to build mutual respect within your team. Each person plays certain roles and has certain responsibilities. You know what these are — you probably defined them. You also know (or should) the talents and skills of everyone on your team. What does each person have a passion for? What can each do better than anyone else on your team? What could each achieve if they realized their potential?
Once you’ve identified this, it’s just a matter of looking for opportunities to highlight each person’s talent throughout the year. As people begin to understand and appreciate each other’s skills, mutual respect will start to develop automatically. Over time, this yields trust.
Humor
Having a sense of humor helps you naturally build trust. It shows that you don’t yourself too seriously. It helps people open up to you. When faced with a particularly difficult challenge, humor can help defuse tension and anxiety in the team.
Don’t *try* to be funny, though. Just lighten up and be able to laugh at yourself or your situation. It does wonders for opening up the team.
Pop Culture
One technique that is particularly helpful if you are coming into a team for the first time is to reference popular culture. If you’re managing boomer and Gen X engineers, for instance, Star Trek (TOS, of course) references work great. Throwing in a couple of Yoda-inspired quotes (without saying they’re Yoda quotes) works, too. What referencing these cultural touchstones does is establish common ground and enable you to tap into a shared experience outside of the organization. Like humor, this is a great way to get people to open up and be receptive.
Avoid Dark Side techniques
Every technique for building trust has a dark side. You may get quicker results this way, but eventually you will pay. More on this in tomorrow’s post.
