The Pathway to Teams that Trust Each Other

The world of work is constantly changing. Gone are the days when teammates all worked together Monday-Friday in the same office. A more common scenario involves teams that are split into hybrid work modes and flex schedules leading to communication happening across multiple channels and platforms and even time zones.

An app for this, some software for that, and offices that no longer have the same energy or dynamics as the not-so-distant past. Some people are telecommuting from other cities, provinces, or even countries, and some are only in the office once a week or once a month.

Complicating matters is the fact that everyone on the team has something else in their life (outside of work) to be worried about (family, friends, and social commitments) and we are all trying to balance our work and life responsibilities while also having meaningful interactions in both.

A challenge we often face is trusting our teammates, and the pathway to fully trusting our teammates is building stronger interpersonal connections with them. Research on people and organizational performance conducted by Aaran De Smet et al. for McKinsey & Company (2024) reported that, “teams that scored above average on trust were 3.3 times more efficient and 5.1 times more likely to produce results, compared with those with below-average trust (para 16).”

Having a sense of belonging, feeling like you can trust your team, and feeling connected with your teammates inevitably leads to better communication and collaboration.

Make it a Goal/KPI

Making strong connections in the workplace can feel a bit daunting. Whether you’re the new person on the team or the senior manager who’s been there for a decade. It can sometimes feel like too much extra “work” to make the effort to connect with people at work when we sometimes struggle to do this in our personal lives as well. It can be challenging to get beyond the breakroom surface-level interactions and into territory where you know your teammates better and can interact with ease and comfort.

Think about connecting with your teammates and building trust as the crucial KPI that supports the achievement of all other individual and team goals. Trusting your team and being well connected with them is so essential in fostering a collaborative work environment that you need HR to have it in your employee file as one of your main goals for the year!

I’m not saying you’ll get a high-performing, ultra dynamic team overnight, but with time and a little effort, you can have that dream team where you feel great about your work because of the strong interpersonal connection and trust you have with your teammates.

Want to trust your team? Want to have better communication with them? Want to feel like you are supported and that you support them? The answer is YES, of course you do! Now, how do you do it?

• Use casual conversation openers and a “get to know you better” attitude to start discussions with your teammates to begin making connections. To get started, try showing up to a meeting a little early, and open a conversation by saying something like, “I’m so glad it’s Friday tomorrow, what are your plans for the weekend?”. Adjust the question based on the context for your workplace.
• Build trust by offering small self-disclosures in return. A little self-disclosure goes a long way. In response to your teammate’s answer, offer some small self-disclosure aligned with the topic they brought up in their answer. You could say something like, “Oh! Those plans [insert answer from your teammate] sound [insert appropriate adjective – fun, interesting, exciting, etc.]. I’ve done/never done [insert plan/activity] before. You’ll have to tell me how it goes.”. This invites future conversations and an opportunity to build stronger connections during a follow-up conversation.
• Strengthen the connection and trust by showing that you care enough to remember what you talked about. Make a note to follow-up later. The first two steps will be meaningless unless you make a point to remember your conversation and ask follow-up questions later. The next time you see your team member, ask them a follow-up question like, “How was [insert weekend plan shared previously] that you told me about last week? What did you enjoy the most?”. This shows that you want to connect with them more outside of those surface-level interactions and get to know them even better.

These 3 small steps can help you to achieve that over-arching goal of building interpersonal connection with your teammates, and over time, these small interactions build on each other until that coveted, affective trust is stronger than ever (Julie V. Dinh et al., 2021). Once that trust and connection are built, the team can truly thrive.

DO

DON’T

When team members get to know each other outside of the day-to-day tasks, projects, deadlines, and general workplace stressors, they see each other as human, people who have lives and passions OUTSIDE of the office, and inevitably teammates who they can rely on when they need support INSIDE the office.

Better communication, successful collaboration, and a strong sense of interpersonal connection and affective trust does not magically happen overnight. However, with a little effort to ask casual questions, offering a little self-disclosure, and showing a genuine interest in your team members through thoughtful follow-up, a group of employees can become a well-connected team. Remember to make building a strong team connection one of your key KPIs!

If you come across any words or terms you’re unfamiliar with while reading, please refer to the glossary file provided. It contains clear definitions to help you better understand the content.

References
De Smet, Aaron et al. (2024, October 31). Go, teams: When teams get healthier, the whole organization benefits. McKinsey & Company, McKinsey Quarterly.

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/go-teams-when-teams-get-healthier-the-whole-organization-benefits

Julie V. Dinh et al. (2021). “Developing team trust: Leader insights for virtual settings” Organizational Dynamics, Volume 50 (Issue 1). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.orgdyn.2021.100846