It should come as no great surprise that trust is crucial to a great team. It’s crucial for all of our key relationships, and it’s something that has been studied and proven many times before. One example being the study from the National Library of Medicine, which found that lower levels of trust within a team fuels relationship conflict and lowers level of group productivity over time. Trust within a team is vital in a workplace. How can you expect someone to collaborate, share and feel confident brainstorming with someone that they can’t trust?
When you search online how to build trust in a team, you get a variety of team building activities and games (we’ve all fallen back into the arms of our colleagues at some point). But does knowing that they will physically catch you when you fall help you when you’re trying to navigate through a tricky project together, unsure of how you can communicate what you need and how they like to work? You need something deeper to build this level of trust, which takes time and a level of shared experiences you only get through working together. But if you add people science to the mix, you may be able to get there faster.
If someone asks you how you like to work on a project, would you be able to clearly tell them? How about what makes you the most productive, or how you like to be managed? When you know the answer and are accurately able to articulate it to your team, it can help you enormously to feel safer, happier and more respected at work. But it’s a level of self-awareness that can be difficult to pinpoint on your own. Although 95% of people think that they are self-aware, organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich reports that the real number is somewhere between 12 and 15%.
This is what our people science insights can give you and your colleagues. They’re an accurate, scientific way to measure and show how you like to work, communicate, be managed... essentially how to get the best out of you. It offers you a lightbulb moment of understanding that gives you the confidence to put practices into place to make work a better place to be for you. Imagine having this, and then sharing it with your team? With everyone in your team respecting how each other likes to work and delegating to everyone’s strengths and preferences... you’ll immediately have a team that works better together. You’re giving everyone the insights to build a solid foundation of trust.
The Thomas Connect platform is a user-friendly way to see these insights about yourself and anyone in your organization. Imagine going in for a conversation about career progression with your manager, but not sure how to navigate a conversation like that together? You can ask Thom, our AI coach, and it’ll tell you by scanning their profile and giving your advice tailored to you both, written by our team of Psychologists.
You can use Thomas Connect to strengthen your team, understand each other and ultimately, understand yourself. Add this to your teams and watch the trust, respect and collaboration grow not only between your teams, but across your entire organization.
