Trust: The Glue that Builds Strong Company Culture
Business teams change but people’s interpersonal connections don’t follow this trend. While the founding team knows each other well, as the business evolves, giving trust only to a select few. Business leaders have to face the challenger of keeping these strong connections alive. Thus they need to build trust within the company. This type of cultural leadership is the extra piece that can set a company apart, and allow it to scale.
A 2012 survey by Interaction Associates showed that high performing teams have a deeper level of team member trust than badly performing teams. This report also highlighted that levels of trust have declined since 2009. So, how can you set your company apart and increase employee retention? How can you increase the effectiveness of multi-disciplinary teams in making great products?
You can’t create trust in an instant
Your on-boarding procedures are a great start to build connections early on. But new employees tend to focus on their immediate colleagues. They don’t always get a chance to connect outside their department for long periods. So they lose any chance to make new connections in those early days.
Imagine the first time two colleagues have to work on a critical project. This is definitely not the time to start building trust. You want your team to work effectively as soon as possible. This requires you to put in a framework to build connections earlier.
So, how can you create this environment?
It all starts with the right conversations
Work socials aren’t always comfortable. A team movie night doesn’t involve wider conversations outside immediate peers. A pub night may pressure people to be social when they don’t want to be.
This is where non-work related conversations and activities help. They remove any power dynamics of experience and company structure. Instead they get people talking together, sharing knowledge and learning. People like stories. And people like hearing about other people’s experiences.
Interests like sports and music are great topics of discussion for more casual chats on online tools like Slack or HipChat. Knowyourcompany.com allows employes to share short notes on a variety of topics. They also allow you to engage the entire company with a casual question each week. Try kickstarting conversations by asking for recommendations for books, restaurants or films.
Focused team events can create trust faster
For a quicker result, focused team activities can provide people common goals in the here and now. Treasure hunts will get ad-hoc teams collaborating and interacting. They let groups who may not interact daily at work forge new trust bonds. As they work together to defeat the challenges set by the hunt setter, they will bond. A team will have to make small, but important commitments to each other during the event. By these small actions, team members build trust by showing by doing. Actions are far stronger than words for building vital connections that a company’s success relies on.
Enigmatic Events designs custom social experiments and interactive events to create better company cultures. We help you work from within to build trust and collaboration between teams. Discover our packages (http://www.enigmaticevents.com/training-victoria/). Let us show you how we can help you create a stronger, more connected company.