Trust is now one of the most important elements of building a successful executive leadership team.

In modern employment relationships, especially at a senior level, traditional command and control has serious limitations. Executives expect to be informed, respected and heard rather than ordered about.

Trust at the top of an organisation will have a huge bearing on success at all levels of the hierarchy.

“Trust is businesses’ ultimate non-tangible asset,” Steven Spurr, CEO of the marketing consultancy, Edelman, said in a recent blog post.

“As a measure relative to reputation, which in many senses is a reflection of past behaviour, trust has the potential to impact future behaviour of your consumers, your stakeholders and your staff based on a combination of corporate behaviour, culture, ethics and performance.”

According to the 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer, trust between employees and their employers is bucking the wider trend.

More than half (58 per cent) of respondents said they trusted their employers to do the right thing.

Employers who have earned the trust of their employees can reap the rewards. The survey revealed that employee trust significantly boosted engagement and loyalty. Employees who trust their employers were also more likely to advocate for the organisation.

How to build and measure trust

If we accept that trust matters and that trust is linked to business success, how can organisations build trust in their executive leadership teams?

The Tuckman model of group development might be more than half a century old, but it is still regularly cited when discussing team dynamics.

Tuckman identified four stages through which teams develop: Forming (team members are still getting to know one another); Storming (team members grow more confident and start to voice their opinions); Norming (the team starts to work out how it will function effectively); and Performing (members start to truly work as a team and the team starts to deliver results).

Leaders have to identify which stage their team is in and adjust their approach accordingly, in order to build trust between team members.

Leaders can, to some extent, judge for themselves how good the levels of trust are between members of a team they run.

But it can also be useful to provide formal opportunities for staff to share their opinions and give their feedback.

Anonymous surveys allow leaders to gain insights into how team members feel about one another and about the leadership. The results can be an opportunity to fix problems that undermine trust early, before they become ingrained in the team culture.

Trust and team building exercises

Corporate team building exercises are one of the most regularly satirised aspects of the modern workplace. Picture a team building exercise and you’re probably more likely to think of a scene from a movie or a TV show than a real life event.

Opinions and even academic literature are divided on whether or not these activities are effective at building trust and improving team performance.

Carlos Valdes-Dapena, a former Mars executive and leadership consultant, believes strongly that most team building events miss the mark entirely. In an article for the Harvard Business Review (HBR) he argued that effective teams started with understanding individual motivation.

Other criticisms of team building activities include the charge that they are box-ticking exercises. Leaders spend the money so they no longer have to think about all the touchy-feeling stuff.

Some team building events fail to properly include all team members, exposing big variations in ability or confidence. While others never get past the barriers of awkwardness and cynicism among participants.

One of the most valuable takeaways from the various articles and studies on team building is the need to embed in the regular working day. Even if your organisation invests in lavish away days to build trust and collaboration, you should think about how the lessons are followed up and reinforced when everyone is back in the office.

If you can get this joined-up approach right, not only will staff be more receptive to the big staged events, but they will also be more likely to permanently change their behaviour towards one another in a positive way.

Building trust on virtual teams

One of the challenges of building trust on your executive team is the likelihood that team members will often be working in different locations.

Maybe they are branch managers spread across the state. Or perhaps they spend time on the road visiting clients or work some days each week from home.

A 2017 report from Regus, the commercial real estate business, revealed that 50 per cent of Australian workers now spend at least 2.5 days per week working outside the main office.

Advocates of remote working argue that physical separation can force leaders to judge team performance using more reliable metrics, such as deliverables completed or targets hit, rather than what time you arrive, what time you leave and how busy you look in between.

But this requires a mindset shift on behalf of leaders and teams.

To build trust on virtual teams everyone needs to embrace and fully invest themselves in the culture of remote working. If everyone tries to work in the same way as before, just not in the office, team dynamics and business performance are likely to suffer.