10 Ingredients For Building Trust in Your Organization

We’ve been posting a lot of posts where we emphasize trust as an integral part of building a successful business based on successful relationships. But how do we build trust in the workplace? Is there a secret recipe or a magic formula that everyone can employ to build trust?

There are numerous things we can do regularly that help in building trust. If we look up ways to build trust on the internet we find that the number one ingredient or way to build trust is “listening” and “listening more than speaking”. Listening is an integral part of being an effective leader too. By engaging in active listening you not only recognize that your employees or colleagues have their own perspective that they are trying to communicate but you also inquire upon the untapped opportunities and ideas that your employees can share and that you and other colleagues can reflect on. Applying active listening by asking interpretive and exploratory questions will give you ample time to listen to what they have to say and will improve the quality of life of everyone.

Listening is not the only thing you have to do to build trust. There are many other ways and lists of ways you have to do among them:

1- Appreciate everyone’s efforts and reward them accordingly;

2- Solicit feedback, accept both positive and negative ones, and take action and improve based on the feedback;

3- Start by trusting your people first so that they reciprocate;

4- Don’t make a lot of promises but when you do, keep every promise and walk the talk;

5- Be consistent day in and day out. Demonstrate integrity and commitment;

6- Be caring and show empathy when faced with difficult situations. Be result-oriented, help your people reach their goals, but also have patience and be welcoming to any result;

7- Build an inclusive workplace and prioritize inclusion so that everyone develops a sense of belonging, being welcomed, and equally valuable to the organization;

8- Ask for help and advice when you are not knowledgeable about something. Don’t pretend that you know more than anyone else however encourage coaching;

9- Always tell the truth, be transparent, credible, and behave in a calm and normal manner. Never overreact to events, situations, or unexpected outcomes;

10- Never Ever expect or think you can become trustworthy in a matter of days, months, or a year. Legendary investor, billionaire, and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffet is known for his quote “it takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently”