5 ways to build trust with new team members
During the first few weeks at work, here are some ways to develop friendly, friendly, and trusting relationships with your new coworkers.
- Make it personal
As long as you keep everything running, it’s okay to share your background, interests, and even your personal story with your team. It may be more powerful to talk about your upbringing and the difficulties you have overcome; humanizes you and helps people understand your motives.
If you aren’t naturally friendly, this can seem intimidating. But it’s okay to be open or even vulnerable. Remember that people naturally want to trust people. Getting to know you will help you connect with your colleagues on a personal level so they can see the person behind the job title.
- Find common ground
Find the things you have in common with your colleagues and find ways to connect with them. For example, if many team members often have lunch together, the first few weeks are a good time to join them. If you are part of a remote team, start a dog conversation in the background of your teammate’s Zoom conversation. Are both of your dogs named Steve ?! Impossible!
It may seem counterintuitive, but feeling connected to your teammates as individuals can help you feel more like a team of employees and not like a random group of people assigned to the same task. .
- Ask for help
Make sure you ask questions and get help if you need it. Asking for help is a way to show vulnerability: it can even stimulate the production of oxytocin, which increases the good feelings that make us happy and cooperative at work.
Asking for help not only shows that you consider your teammates capable, it also helps you actively exercise power by showing that you admit what you don’t know. It will give you credibility in the future if you know something.
- Ask for feedback
Asking for feedback is like asking for help; show your new colleagues that you trust their experience but don’t feel intimidated by them. By asking for feedback on a recent assignment or performance, you are showing that your priority is to do a good job that resonates with everyone, rather than making yourself the star of the show.
Ask your teammates for their opinion on topics they excel at. For example, you can ask a communications specialist if he has read your report carefully, even if you have not worked with them directly.
- Be aware of body language and voice
Communication is more than words. Body language, facial expression, and tone are equally important in conveying a message.
Here are some ways to show warmth non-verbally from the Harvard Business Review:
Speak in a low, calm volume, as if you are comforting someone instead of expressing excitement
Smile, but don't pretend. Find a reason to smile, even change the subject for a moment to share a story or compliment a teammate
Avoid smiling with raised eyebrows, as this conveys fear
Stand straight and act with awareness; avoid embarrassmentToday, the role of tone and body language is complicated by the prevalence of teleworking. With virtual teams and hybrid work models becoming more common than ever, you may no longer be able to meet your colleagues in person.
You may think that non-verbal communication is less important in this situation, but the opposite is true. Since there is less communication between distant teammates, their communication is very important. But you also need to give remote teammates more freedom in interpreting their behavior. Since you don’t know what else is going on around them, it’s best to assume that a potentially rude or insensitive interaction has nothing to do with you and has everything to do with a broken internet connection or a crying baby that she pulls her hair. from. try to make it.
It’s also important to be very clear about how your team uses remote working tools, such as in what context your new team uses email versus. Slack or video chat? Chances are your new job has already found a way to cope with the challenges of remote working. Understanding them keeps you sensitive to their preferences and provides context for their behavior.
Remember the “goodwill shield” we talked about? This is even more important in remote teams, where people have less context to evaluate each other’s performance. While you should be as generous as possible when interpreting your coworkers’ behavior, you really want to keep an eye on your tone for the first few weeks.
It’s a great time to be as warm, friendly, and human as possible – GIFs, emoticons, and video chats are your new best friends. And give Zoom your full attention: your facial expressions and your voice can be the only basis for your colleagues to trust you. And if your new team has downtime, why not suggest having fun with virtual team building?
