Developing and Maintaining Trust at Bwork

Developing and maintaining trust at work
Trust is an integral part of forming a high performance team, “High performance teams can only operate in a climate of trust” [Tuckman]. There are many factors to look at when assessing how trust is built up and maintained, trust can’t occur without effective communication this should be good communication between all members of a team. For effective communication to occur each person within the team needs to feel free to communicate without repercussions or fear of being targeted or not listened to. Effective communication is not only verbal and also encompasses body language, active listening and effective interaction within a group.
Staff meetings when organised and run efficiently can be an excellent example of effective communication. A staff meeting should give all present the opportunity to add to the agenda and play an active part in putting across their ideas, issues and concerns. Within residential child care we recently changed the format of the staff meetings ensuring that all staff had ample opportunity to list agenda items before attending, and with the aim of making it less of an authoritarian style. When an issues is discussed the chair will start the discussion stating the agenda item and will then give each staff member   starting from the left and heading in a clockwise rotation round the room the opportunity to have their input listened to. This method for facilitating staff meetings solved issues including employees or managers talking over the top of someone trying to make a point,   giving an equal opportunity to each employee regardless of status or how loud they can talk and creating an environment of respect and shared ownership of input into the staff meeting. This co-operation forms good group bonds of trust Tyler [2002] stated “We display cooperative behaviour by performing our assigned job or participating in other activities to benefit the group” Many times within residential setting staff...