Trust Issues In Relationships

How Trust is Built and Destroyed in Teams

Experienced team leaders know they need to prevent trust issues in relationships in teams from occurring. One of the most effective tools a leader can use is a Team Assessment Tool. It’s a simple exercise where the team rates how it functions as a team. Most of the tools have ten dimensions that indicate whether a team is effective or not. Using this tool the team critiques its own effectiveness as a team.

In every team assessment, Trust is one of the key dimensions.

When a team rates trust high the team members often say they:

• Understand and agree on the goals
• Can test their assumptions
• Consider other members ideas
• Can disagree in a constructive way
• Share leadership roles
• Evaluate their functioning or process
• Support procedures to guide and regulate how they functions together
• Experiment with different ways of doing things
• Are open and participate

When a team rates trust low the team members often say they:

• Haven’t resolved conflicts
• Criticize another team member behind their backs
• Express their concerns in a negative way without offering a solution
• Attack a member personally instead of focusing on a problem or issue
• Agree to take action, but fail to take it
• Interrupt each other
• Discount what some members say
• See only one way of doing things and refuse to listen to other options

Many of us struggle with trusting others because we’ve had bad experiences in their past with people who violate our trust. It is very hard to gain trust back if someone violated it. Once it happens it often can take time to repair trust and credibility. If trust is not repaired it is very likely the relationship will not survive. It’s the same with teams. If team members want to repair trust they will need to take a risk to trust the person who violated trust.

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