Trust in High-Performing Teams

Trust is a complicated aspect of the relationships between persons, but trust on the team level is even more complex. Trust increases communication, commitment, and loyalty between team members. Trust can be considered as a foundation that enables people to work together, and it is an enabler for social interactions. It can also improve team performance and increase the probability of creating successful companies. Trust plays a crucial role when global business teams, startups, and networks are being created. In modern organizations, trust has become increasingly important because the organizations cannot rely on formal policies and rigid rules.

The team is a basic unit of performance for most organizations; it melds together the skills, experiences, and insights of several people. High-performing teams are not usually a collection of the brightest individuals. Rather, they are functioning entities that have diverse roles for the team members who provide the skills and knowledge to succeed. Healthy rivalries between team members enable the team to perform at a high level, but only if the team is built on robust trust.

Trust building is a relatively slow and long process compared to other business processes, but it can be accelerated with open interaction and good communication skills. Shared experiences create trust and trust, in turn, enables deeper levels of interaction and expression between team members. Trust building requires openness, informing, honesty and arguments; trust also enables free sharing of ideas, which is the basis of innovation processes. Usually, the feeling of trust is based on intuition and emotions.

Cook studied teams in IT companies and defined the characteristics of a high-performing team. High-performing teams have a clearly defined and commonly shared purpose, mutual trust and respect, clarity around individual roles and responsibilities, high levels of communication, willingness to work towards the greater good of the team, and a leader who both supports and challenges the team members. There is also a climate of cooperation and an ability to voice differences and appreciate conflict. A high-performing team does not sweep inevitable differences under the carpet and it values openness.

Järvenpää, Knoll, and Leidner have researched team building in global, virtual teams. Their research revealed the importance of sharing personal information, such as background, work experience, and current organizational contexts. Trust, benevolence, ability, and integrity were perceived to increase because of team-building exercises. The exercises focused on enriching communication, creating a team identity and building team spirit. In high-trust teams people expressed their feelings, for example excitement, more freely. Team members also gave each other recognition and feedback. Disagreements were discussed more openly. Overall, high-trust teams had more open interaction and discussion. Reagans and Zuckerman's research about R&D teams reveals the positive relationship between communication frequency and productivity. Their research also shows that homogeneous teams yield a lower level of productivity.

Larson and LaFasto described the importance of a team leader's ability to: i) share the vision successfully, ii) execute needed changes, and iii) motivate team members to their best actions by supporting a healthy climate and high energy level. Team members should internalize the vision and desired targets to reach a high-performing state. Team members should also be open to hear others' opinions and take part in team discussion.

When building high-performing teams, one should make sure that everyone shares the common goal or goals and that there is commitment and understanding of what needs to be done, on both personal and team levels. Team members should also have competence trust for each other, which is based on the trustee's knowledge and expertise.