How To Rebuild Trust On A Team

One of the biggest factors in helping a team collaborate optimally is the level of trust on the team. The extent to which team members feel safe to express themselves, believe their colleagues will deliver on promises, and trust their leader to lead can have a massive effect on their ultimate performance.

And as we know from research, trust is a reciprocal process. When one person acts with trust, the other feels trusted and responds with greater trust. But that virtuous cycle can turn into a vicious one when trust is broken. When trust is broken, either by leadership actions or by allowing a team member’s actions, it can be difficult to build it back. But there’s a few actions leaders can take to rebuild trust faster after the breach.

So in this article, we’ll outline how to rebuild trust on a team through five steps that help kick start a new virtuous cycle of trust.

Own The Failure

The first step to rebuild trust on a team is to own the failure. It doesn’t matter here if it was your failure or a failure you allowed to happen on the team. As the leader, you need to take responsibility for what happened. Owning the failure demonstrates to your team that you recognize the breach of trust happened, and you’re not content to let a newer, lower level of trust exist on your team. It signals to everyone that…