Follow these 5 simple steps and your company will experience a tremendous shift in success, happiness, and productivity

Trust is a golden currency in any company. It is a vital ingredient of any business. It is the strongest pillar of a company.

You might be familiar with this saying: »Trust takes years to build, seconds to break and forever to repair.«

You see, every business is a PEOPLE’s business. Many entrepreneurs mistakenly believe that their product is what drives sales.  With that in mind, they boast about the product’s features trying to present it to the outer world as the holy grail. But what happens later? They are disappointed because they were not as successful in their business as they first anticipated. 

They concentrated on the wrong business ingredient from the very beginning. Without a product or service,  their company would not even exist, but what makes any type of business success is the TRUST that you manage to build. You build trust not just within your organization, but with your potential customers and existing clients as well.

Every person enters into a business relationship to fulfill their needs. However, in order to do so, entrepreneurs need to understand their needs. Entrepreneurs achieve that by establishing and nurturing the relationship. Only when a customer starts trusting them (and their company) they will open up and share them their true needs.

The same principle applies to your company. Trust is a major force that drives everything. Entrepreneurs concentrate on building relationships with the customers but fail to build strong relationships with the team. In successful companies, the employees feel fulfilled and happy. You can immediately detect that when being in contact with such company. You feel that certainty and warmth. You feel respect and genuine care.

In order to build trust in your team, you as an entrepreneur need to complete all 5 stages. I call this a Circle of Trust. Each stage has to be meet in order for the next one to exist. Stages are trust, empowerment, motivation, learning culture and culture of innovation.

How do you build Circle of Trust in your company?

You develop them by genuinely caring for people’s needs. Be loyal and make sure to keep your promises.

Without trust, you can not build a dedicated team.

You build trust inside your team when:

• you believe in their skills,
• you believe they have all the needed knowledge to tackle the existing and future challenges,
• they are resourceful when needed.

Empowerment

Based on the above-mentioned presumptions you empower your team. Empowerment gives your employee the green light to adopt important decisions without seeking approval from their superiors.

When you empower your team, you give them unimaginative professional elixir boosting their confidence and increasing their motivation to tackle any challenge they face. They are proud as they know they can bend rules, take instant decisions and also challenge status quo of the company, forcing it to constantly develop. In today’s technology-driven environment adaptability is vital for the survival of a company. Empowered employees result in happy and loyal customers. They are namely the ones that see the instant benefit as their problems are addressed quickly and individually if needed differently (and not »by the book«). When giving empowerment managers have to make sure that the company’s goals are clear as this will be the guideline for the team. Without a vision and targets, empowerment would not have any effect. Empowerment on the other side brings an important aspect of the relationship which is ACCOUNTABILITY. The empowered employee becomes responsible for the results (non)achieved.

Motivation and learning culture

When people are motivated, they have a natural tendency, a need, to upgrade their knowledge. This establishes the learning culture in your company. When people know that they will be able to use their knowledge, this actually drives them even more to extend their skills. Learning culture means you as a company encourage and invite your team to participate in courses, seminars, additional learning activities in order to boost their creativity and enlarge their horizon. Also, employees will on their own start seeking information and will be learning new skills outside work hours as well.  They will dedicate their free time to upgrade their professional skills.

One of the basic needs of employees is the feeling they contribute to the success of the company. By receiving an empowerment they are definitely motivated to upgrade themselves knowing that management TRUSTS them in their endeavor.

Culture of Innovation

By developing a learning culture in your company, you open the doors to the culture of innovation in your business. When you trust your team you are confident that their ideas are good and worthy. You honestly believe that by getting initiative from their side can truly improve its work. And this trust goes both ways. Because you believe in your employees, they are not frightened when giving initiatives.They proudly present their ideas, improvement of the service, different angles to solve any company’s challenges.            

They are not scared that their suggestions will be laughed at or discredited. They know that they can speak up WITHOUT being PUNISHED in any way. They feel comfortable in questioning status-quo by giving new ideas they contribute to the further development of the company, making sure that the company will not stagnate. 

When you open the door and welcome new ideas you take an important step.  You reaffirm the power of trust. Without feeling trusted at work employees would not be willing to share any ideas as they would not feel confident that they will be heard and respected.

This completed circle also triggers another important aspect of the success of the company − LOYALTY to the team. As they feel valued and respected and know that the company is taking care of their professional needs, they become loyal to the company. There is no greater ambassador of the company as a loyal team (and loyal customers).

This circle represents the flow of trust that can be applied in any industry. However, there is a little catch. The process will be successful only when the feeling of trust is real. It does not help if trust is set as a vital virtue of a company only on a declaration level. It has to be practiced in reality. A leader, a manager, an owner has to showcase their example in order for the system to work. They need to show trust and build strong relationships. This can be achieved by truly taking care of its team, showing respect, by being honest and keeping their promises.

Relationships are a basic pillar of any business and they are built on trust. How do you build trust inside your team?