Source | www.forbes.com | Dana Brownlee
This article is part of a series focused on building trust within teams.
Teams can’t reach the highest levels of productivity and effectiveness without high levels of trust – they just can’t. Intuitively, most of us know this, but there’s still a tendency in leadership circles to bifurcate warm, fuzzy concepts like trust and hard concepts like results and revenue. The truth though is the two are inextricably linked. Let’s explore just a few of the many reasons why trust is such an important a necessary ingredient for broader team success and enhanced business results.
#1 Trust Builds Psychological Safety
Google’s study on what makes their teams successful found that the number one factor for team success is psychological safety. Timothy R. Clark, CEO of LeaderFactor and author of the forthcoming book, The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety: Defining the Path to Inclusion and Innovation clarifies the relationship between trust and psychological safety.
“Trust is essentially the predictive understanding of another’s behavior. The link between trust and psychological safety is based on my prediction of your behavior based on your pattern of behavior. If I can predict that you won’t embarrass, punish, or humiliate me when I’m interacting with you and others in a social setting, I’m much more likely to engage, participate, and release my discretionary efforts. If I don’t trust that you will keep me safe, that lack of trust will trigger my self-censoring instinct and I’ll play it safe and manage my own personal risk.”
