How to Get the Team to Trust You More

Want your team members to increase their trust in you? Give them more feedback.

In fact, not giving enough feedback can erode trust. How so?

If you give feedback only every now and then, your team might assume that you don’t care about the work or about them.

But what if they assume you care, and they’ve also learned that your style is “No news is good news”? (maybe you’ve said as much). Anytime they produce some work and don’t hear from you, what will happen?

Some will stress out, waiting for the hammer to drop. Others will assume they’ve done well, and feel pressure (which is probably imagined) to put in the same performance again and again.

Both of these scenarios reinforce fear and a fixed mindset. Not trust.

However, if you regularly give feedback — honest, helpful, timely — you demonstrate that you’re present. You notice both the good and the not so good. You care, both about people and their work, and you don’t take them for granted. You’re on their side. You’re human.

The practice itself — how to actually give honest, helpful, and timely feedback — is not easy. But it’s worth getting good at, because it builds trust, which opens the doors to all sorts of goodness.