They say it takes years: How to accelerate trust building 

Talent leaders can help build trust organically through team dynamics and everyday interactions.

In today’s complex and rapidly changing business environment, trust is more crucial than ever. It influences employee thriving, executive retention and the effectiveness of remote work teams. As technology and misinformation challenge traditional notions of trust, more and more organizations are prioritizing building and maintaining trust to ensure success and stability.

The latest researchers show that roughly 30 percent of U.S. adults say most people can be trusted, a steady decline from previous decades. Technology has permanently changed people’s relationship with trust — calling into question the information from Google search results, Wikipedia pages, social media and now generative AI tools such as ChatGPT. In fact, executives around the world have identified misinformation/disinformation as the top risk over the next two years — especially critical in the 2024 election cycle.​

On the other hand, trust has a significant impact on employee thriving.​ Employees who trust their organization are twice as likely to report that they are thriving. According to Mercer industry research, the importance of “working for an organization with a purpose employees can be proud of” increased from ninth to first position. Additionally, a sense of belonging (40 percent) moved into second place and feeling valued for their contributions (37 percent) rounds out the top three. 

The level of trust that employees have in their organization is the strongest factor influencing how energized they feel at work, their sense of thriving and their intent to stay. People who work at high-trust companies experience 74 percent less stress. Conversely, a low-trust work environment can be stressful for everyone involved. ​

Trust impacts executives’ decisions to leave. ​C-suite executives are less likely than middle management employees to say they intend to stay with their organization this year (46 percent versus 68 percent). One in three senior leaders plans to leave in the next 12–18 months, and a further 20 percent think they may be let go or see their role eliminated. Of those who do plan to leave, one in three factors is a loss of trust in their organization. ​

Trust is crucial in remote setup. ​Especially now, with more people working from home as part of a virtual team, trust is more important than ever. A remote team must have a high level of trust. ​

And the last but not the least, millennials expect high level of trust at the workplace. ​

In the workplace, millennials are 22x more likely to work for a company with a high trust culture. 

But how do we define trust?

Management consultants often refer to the formula suggested in the book “The Trusted Advisor” by David H. Maister which includes four components:

CREDIBILITY – relates to the words we speak. For example, we might say, “I can trust what she says about leadership development; she’s very credible on the subject.”

RELIABILITY – pertains to actions. For instance, we might say, “If he says he’ll deliver the report tomorrow, I trust him because he’s dependable.”

INTIMACY – refers to the safety or security we feel when entrusting someone with something. For example, we might say, “I can trust her with that information; she’s never violated my confidentiality before, and she would never embarrass me.”

SELF-ORIENTATION – relates to the person’s focus, specifically whether their focus is primarily on themselves or on others. For instance, we might say, “I can’t trust him on this deal — I don’t think he cares enough about me; he’s focused on what he gets out of it.” The more we are open to the viewpoints, agendas and interests of other people, the better our connection and trust-building will be.

At EPAM, we conducted a comprehensive culture inventory research that included qualitative interviews with leaders worldwide and a global culture survey for all employees. With a response rate of more than 60 percent, we gathered more than 70,000 open comments. These comments were carefully analyzed by our research team and grouped into eight areas of concern to focus on. This inventory reaffirmed the importance of trust-building as the bedrock for our desired culture of innovation, employee development, teamwork, collaboration and communication.

Despite the common belief that trust takes years to establish, it is possible to accelerate this process with intentional strategies and tools. The key is that you don’t need company-wide programs or orders from above to build trust within teams and boost communication transparency. It can happen organically through team dynamics and everyday interactions.

Invest time to focus on building trust in your team and between teams. Specifically: ​

  • Help build team awareness and alignment around the issue of trust – through consensus on trust-building preferences, storytelling around shared past experiences and creating shared group experiences of trust.
  • Build a common framework for communicating and working together as a team. ​
  • Highlight leadership behaviours explicitly dedicated to the issue of trust-building.
  • Encourage fellow team members to get to know each other at a personal level, linked to building deeper trust.​

Here is an example of a trust-building activity you can do with your team tomorrow: Ask each team member to choose two cards that represent values important to them and discuss in groups why these values matter. Then, as a team, choose and agree on two cards that are important for the team as a whole.

This group task will help you reveal and share your values with the rest of the team, fostering transparent and trustful communication.

In my personal view, trust is the highest form of human-to-human interaction. There is no better invention than giving each other a credit of trust. When people feel trusted, they are more likely to act with authenticity, transparency and accountability. They are motivated to uphold the trust placed in them, driving them to strive for excellence and act in ways that reinforce that credit. Trust isn’t just an ingredient for a productive work environment—it’s the secret sauce that makes everything infinitely better.

Natalia Kryvasheina specializes in creating and executing leadership excellence strategy while reinforcing the company’s culture. She leads efforts in succession planning for org roles, high-potential development and diversity, equity and inclusion learning solutions portfolio at EPAM Systems, a global IT company that specializes in software engineering services, digital platform engineering and digital product design.