How might an abundance of trust impact effort and performance?
Fostering a feeling of trust in your team is a fantastic way to empower and motivate them. Try these six strategies to embed trust in your team.
1.Ask them their views.
Asking your team what they think about key initiatives, events or developments in education shows that you value their views. Be sure to listen to and act upon their responses.
2. Let them get on with things.
As leaders, it is your duty to ensure that the vision and expectations for your team are extremely clear and achievable. Once you’ve established and communicated the expectations, trusting your staff to get on with things shows that you trust them.
3. Give them opportunities.
It might be tempting to take everything on yourself but no one person can do it all! Challenge members of your team to take on or trial initiatives and be sure to offer them sufficient CPD. Nothing says ‘I trust you,’ more than giving people the chance to do something exciting and important for the school.
4. Listen to their ideas.
When a team member comes to you with an idea, be mindful to hear it out. Maybe there are other priorities or perhaps the idea has been tried before, but give them the time to talk it out and show them that you respect them enough to consider about their idea.
5. Ask them to help you.
If you are out of school and you need some of your responsibilities picked up, ask your team to help cover these. It shows that you trust them to manage things in your absence.
6. Avoid micromanaging
Why do you need to monitor every little thing? It is, of course, expected that leaders know exactly what is going on and why, however, aim to find ways to keep ‘in the know’ without excessive formal monitoring.
Why instil trust in your team?
A lack of trust can lead to a lack of motivation and a level of frustration in your team. Distributing leadership, hearing out ideas and asking for help show the team that you have trust in their abilities.
Literally telling someone out loud that you trust them is a really explicit and powerful way to let them know.
You can find another 238 of these ideas in 60 Second CPD.
