10 Key Business Management Skills to Build Trust With Your Employees

By Martin Haworth

Employees never feel comfortable under a boss who doesn't trust them or whom they don't trust. In the absence of mutual trust productivity falls as the employees get into politics, covering their backs and other counterproductive activity.

Not trusting each other will affect morale, which leads to a deterioration in customer satisfaction as the focus shifts from the business needs to internal wrangling.

So, let's look at some key qualities a manager must possess to develop trust.

1. Effective Communication
A manager must communicate well to build strong relationships with their people. In difficult times, employees might think no news as bad news, so a manager must keep in close touch. Lack of communication reduces trust; being open with information creates it.

2. Trust Others and They Will Trust You
A manager must develop an ability to trust others and create an environment of trust throughout the workplace. Really, it is better to assume the trustworthiness of employees to start with, rather than waiting for them to earn it. Team members find it much easier to trust their manager if they feel trusted themselves.

3. Honesty In Everything
Being open and honest is a key ingredient for generating trust. When you are open about your vision, actions and intentions, you will usually generate strong support. Both good and bad news should be openly shared, reducing gossip and internal politics. By admitting mistakes and not trying to cover them up, shows any manager to be a normal human being, just like everyone else!

4. Establish Strong Business Ethics
Managers should create a moral value system for the workplace. Teams which have a common ethics are healthier, resourceful, adaptable and productive because of the common root of their consistent value systems.

5. Keep Your Word
By making actions visible and fulfilling commitments, managers become trusted. Failing on promises is insincere and causes tensions. A manager needs to deliver actions visibly, to ensure everyone is aware that they can be depended upon.

6. Be Consistent
In the process of building trust, being consistent and predictable is very important. If the behavioral pattern changes from to week to week, trusting it becomes difficult. Your people get twitchy and uncomfortable when plans and expectations change too much.

7. Be Easily Available
Your team members need to able to get to you when they need to. Whilst there may be times when, for purposes of doing your own work, you need to remain undisturbed, there needs to be a balance. You are the manager and they will need you for specific involvement in day to day activities.

8. Maintaining Confidences
Employees who you manage must be able to confide in you sensitive information, express concern and share problems. People need to know that you can keep this confidential when they need you to. Sometimes these can be personal matters and in such cases this becomes even more important.

9. Language Matters
Watching your language is crucial. By avoiding using the "us" and "them" figures of speech and sticking with "we" wherever possible, your team will bond better with you. Your language should be clear and simple, because everyone interprets what is said differently - so you need to speak plainly for everyone to understand.

10. Creating Social Time
Having informal social interactions with the team enhances the trust building procedure. In context, social interactions are a big opportunity for success for any good manager.

To make a team which works together efficiently, requires the abundant presence of mutual trust. By consistently thinking of and working on trust building, any manager will reap long-lasting positive benefits.

(c) 2008 Martin Haworth is the author of Super Successful Manager, an easy to use, step-by-step weekly development program for managers of EVERY skill level. You can get a sample lesson for free at http://www.SuperSuccessfulManager.com