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Credible Coach Tips: How To Build Trust in A Team

As a leader, fostering trust within your team is extremely important if you want to maintain high-performance levels. Teams that trust each other share information and help each other to work to the best of their ability. They ask questions without fear of exposing their vulnerabilities, promoting innovation, creativity and risk taking.

There are several ways you can encourage trust within your team through your every day actions.

6 ways to build trust in a team

1) Lead by example

Your teams are far more likely to behave how you want them to when you’re already modelling that behaviour. If you’re after a team that takes risks and where people coach each other on a daily basis, you need to show these behaviours as well.

Lead by example for better team behaviours.Lead by example – show your team what sort of behaviours you want from them.

2) Coach with emotional intelligence

Remember that everyone on your team is also an individual. They react differently to risky situations or to coaching styles. Using emotional intelligence principles to understand their individual personalities will truly benefit your team’s performance.

3) Provide true and honest feedback

If your team is not working well together, the only way to get around it is to be honest with them. Providing your team members with honest feedback on a regular basis shows them that you’re invested in them. You’re also proactively addressing the situation rather than avoiding it, which in turn will help you build trust in your team.

4) Adapt your coaching style to your team

Especially if you’ve managed several teams during your career, you might have noticed that team members react differently to one another. While some teams really benefit from group coaching sessions, others work better in one-to-one meetings or pairs. Adapting your coaching style to your team’s needs supports their growth and performance.

5) Remove the blame game

Hopefully you’re already modelling this behaviour, but if one thing is toxic to a team, it is blame. To create a high-performance team, your team members should feel safe to admit a mistake and take responsibility or ask for help in resolving it. If you don’t encourage this behaviour, you’ll be left with a fearful team that’s too scared to confide in one another or try anything new.

Encourage your team to work together to correct mistakes.Remove the blame game by encouraging your team to accept mistakes and work together to provide solutions.

6) Create space for social interaction

Whether you make space at the start of every meeting for chit chat, or you organise team social activities, get everyone talking about life outside of work. By doing this, you’ll allow your team to build meaningful connections and trustful relationships with each other.

Learning more about corporate team building

To learn more about getting the best out of your team, take a look at the ICML course ‘Coaching for Performance’. Tailored for managers, this course helps you build all the necessary leadership skills you need to improve your team’s performance through coaching and is available across Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.


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