Building Trust with Your Team

I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine that I have mentored for years in the fitness industry. He no longer works for me, yet we have kept our relationship of mentor/mentee and he still calls me when he has questions or wants my opinion on his career choices. The funny thing is, he still works for the group that I was a part of and during this conversation, he mentioned that he trusts the group so deeply, that he knows they want what's best for him. As his original hiring manager, this was impactful for me to hear. Even without me being his boss anymore, he still illicitly trusts the company. So this begs the question, how do you develop trust that even goes beyond just your direct report? Let's look at 4 ways to build lasting and impactful trust beyond just the surface level. 

1 - Be transparent when it matters 

When you are in the midst of turmoil, growth, or uncertainty, have you ever given false hope or said you knew exactly where you were going when in reality you had no idea? As leaders, we all have bent the truth a time or two to keep our team calm through adversity. The issue with these situations, is that often we fear our team leaving with a lack of certainty, we fear teams losing faith in us if we don't have all the answers, or worse: we fear that our team is completely dependent on us to give the final say in every decision. What is the commonality in why we act this way: fear. The great thing about leadership is when we refuse to act out of fear, great things happen. When we are honest about not knowing what will happen, we are able to ask our team for their input as to where we should go. When we allow feedback from our teams, we are often shown who is willing to ask hard questions or make suggestions others may not have thought of. This is one of the ways that leaders are developed. 

2 - Align personal goals with company strategy

Notice that I did not recommend aligning personal goals with company goals necessarily, but instead company strategy. The reason for this is most people in management want one of two things, they want growth (whatever that means to them individually) or they want consistency and dependability. Either way, digging into what your employees appreciate means more than just what they say they want. Getting to know your teammates' tendencies and reactions to situations will also help you teach them about themselves. Some will say they want growth, but when you evaluate their behavior, they act in ways that tend towards consistency more than risk. There is nothing wrong with this, but must be addressed to the team members to help them understand that growth for them may mean more developing a rock-solid team to steadily grow a location as opposed to opening multiple new locations. Both scenarios can be growth two to different people. 

3 - Check in on your teammates, not just their performance 

One of the most important leadership lessons I have learned over the years is managing people is exactly that: people. It can feel very counterintuitive but don't always talk about work with your coworkers. Every one on one check in, leave time at the beginning of the meeting to see how they are doing outside of work. I've always been a fan of the random phone call letting a team member know something made me think of them, seeing how a vacation went, or seeing how they are feeling after a sick day. In the same vein, a random call letting them know something you appreciate about them goes a long way in building personal value and confidence in your team members. Who doesn't want a more confident and valued team? 

4 - Talk about your failures 

The last lesson in building trust with your team is to be open and honest about your failures. Years ago, our company decided to make a massive pricing change to one of our fitness centers. We thought that we had a great communication plan, execution plan, and even a plan on how to handle complaints from those who may have not been satisfied with the changes. You can probably guess why I am telling this story, but things did not go as planned, at all. We nearly had a mutiny on our hands, not only from the members but even some of the staff were very disappointed in the changes. We quickly held a staff meeting to allow space for the staff to give us feedback, in which staff members were certainly not afraid to let us know where and how we messed up. Once they all gave their opinions, we owned up to our mistakes, asked the staff to forgive us for where we misstepped, and then asked them to help us fix it. The best thing that came from that meeting wasn't the staff calming down members, the increases in revenue, or even the growth we saw in the profit of the location. The best thing that came from that meeting was the staff knew they could trust us to own up to our mistakes, and that we were in this together. 

When seeking to build trust within your team, there are plenty of tactics, strategies, and techniques out there, but the most important thing to remember to build massive trust is that your people want to follow you. They simply need you to prove that you are worth following. 

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