5 ways to maintain lasting trust
Of course, building trust doesn’t stop once you start your new role. Here are some ways to maintain warm relationships, build trust, and make sure your coworkers consider you strong and capable (but not intimidating):
- Demonstrate skills with confidence
Competence is all about your performance, so this is a trust-building area that we all focus on when starting a new job. While you should start transferring heat, of course, expertise is just as important – it shows that you really have the skills you say you have.
Trust helps you project competence. If you are paralyzed by impostor syndrome and you don’t trust yourself, how can you expect someone else to trust you? Remember that you were hired for a reason. If you take your job seriously, confidence in your abilities will naturally increase over time.
- Be transparent and honest
Honesty is the best policy. Don’t dance on bad news. Your co-workers will lose faith in you if they realize they aren’t getting all the information. It’s also important to be honest if you disagree with a colleague or if you see a problem with something you’re working on together. Speaking openly can be scary, but the solid foundation of trust you build when starting work makes these kinds of difficult (and less frightening) conversations possible.
- Be trustworthy
Your teammates need to know they can count on you to get the job done. Keep your word so your colleagues know that if you work hard, they can trust you.
If something comes up that prevents you from keeping your word, deal with it immediately. It’s about being honest about bad news; show your colleagues that they always understand the whole story with you.
- Accept mistakes (sometimes)
Human failure and error are inevitable. Never attack or blame your colleagues if one of their ideas doesn’t work or if it takes time and energy to correct their mistake. If people fear being punished for failures, they won’t trust you and they certainly won’t feel comfortable bringing new ideas to the table. It affects innovation, the speed of decision making and the quality of the finished work.
- Treat everyone equally
This should be common sense: playing favorites or talking about coworkers behind their backs is one of the fastest ways to destroy trust. Nobody likes a dull, gossipy colleague – and everyone notices it, whether you realize it or not. If you don’t treat people fairly and fairly, your teammates will soon learn that they can’t like you or trust your intentions.
Trust that you are trustworthy
Trust can seem like a big and difficult subject. After all, we’re talking about psychological hazards and safety, concepts that many people would associate with horror movies on a typical office day!
But the good news is that trust comes down to good intentions. As you read about building trust with your new colleagues, you can rest assured that your intentions are in the right place.
It is also a good sign that you are looking for trust ahead of time, even before starting your new job. When it comes to trust, the first few weeks are crucial – after all, trust is easier to build than to restore. By starting your trust at work, you take the opportunity to build strong relationships that will bear fruit over the course of your time in your new role.
With these tips, you can start building strong, warm relationships and then focus on demonstrating your strengths, skills, and abilities to your peers. And this is a recipe for building trust: no awkward team building exercises.
