For decades, many team-building workshops have included the “trust fall.” While the act may seem clichéd today, the idea behind it remains invaluable: the importance of building trust in your career.
Think of trust as the key component to “what if?” scenarios: What if you have a choice that offers great risk, but greater potential reward? Trusting your superiors won’t sabotage your efforts or punish you if it doesn’t work are factors in choosing to proceed. Your career — and theirs, too — needs trust to flourish.
For the manager in that scenario, communicating trust to employees fosters an innovative, forward-thinking workplace where new ideas are encouraged. For the employee, it’s important to trust your co-workers to act in the group’s best interest. Trusting management and supporting their initiatives can make it easier for you to back their efforts or perhaps blaze some new trails of your own. When we talk about “team players,” trust is what makes people want to be a part of a team.
Your career will benefit from participating in a healthy, trusting workplace. Here are five.
- Healthy communication: Trust creates a sense of goodwill to enable clear, direct communication without fear of retaliation or distortion due to suspicion of motive. Trust lets you — and everyone around you — be heard.
- Innovation: It’s easier to try new things when you can trust your colleagues and superiors to support your efforts. If you fail, at the very least you can trust they won’t take advantage of your failure. Without trust, the potential risks of innovation will almost always outweigh the benefits, and the status quo will be chosen over forward movement.
- Timely decision-making: In low-trust situations, every decision, no matter how small, must pass through layers of approvals. In high-trust situations, no one second-guesses the outcome or your intent, so decisions and deadlines are easier to meet.
- Transparency: Trusting the people around you with information — and them trusting you in return — makes it easy to be transparent in everything you do. They trust you act ethically, and you trust they do the same.
- Morale: It’s easier, even enjoyable, to work in an environment where you know the people around you have your back. Imagine going to your office every day and trying to get work done in a low-trust environment. You might have the occasional accomplishment, but the emotional and productive drain would be significant.
As the saying goes, trust has to be earned. It’s also not a blank check to do whatever you like. As you progress in your career, you’ll amass trust a little at a time through reliable action and demonstrations of prudent decision-making and solid interpersonal skills; hopefully, your co-workers and managers do the same.
By working to build trust, you’ll build a rich career with enormous possibilities.
Ready to skyrocket your career at an innovative, forward-thinking company? Apply to Paycom today!
