Whaaaat’s Trust got to do, got to do with it — a managers guide

Trust is often talked about as being important to a company’s success, but it’s absolutely CRUCIAL in the ambiguity ridden and fast-paced environment of startups. Both at organisational and manager level.

It’s not just customers, who have to believe in you and your products and services. Trust inside the business is just as important: Your employees must believe in each other. When they don’t, communication, teamwork and performance inevitably suffer.

To build a high performing team you need a foundation of trust that enables collaboration, open communication, and accountability. Tobias Lütke, CEO at Shopify talks superbly having a “Trust Battery” here

Without trust, you build frustration, resentment, miss targets and deadlines, and increase regrettable staff turnover. Basically, it’s all bad.

I’m going to dive into the key challenges startup managers face in building and sustaining trust, and share some practical solutions to help you create a high-trust environment.

Lastly — I could write about the trust equation, but it’s a bit theoretical for what I’m going for and there are about 1000 blogs on it. So if you want to learn more, here’s a good practical one.

Key Challenges and how to solve them:

Establishing credibility as a new manager

• New managers or folks new to the company might be perceived as lacking experience or expertise
• If you fail to establish your credibility, your team won’t follow your guidance, or invest their trust
• This leads to disengagement, a lack of cohesion or outright insubordination.
• If that happens, you’re screwed.

Solution:

Fundamentally, you need to know your stuff and be able to demonstrate that capability to your team. If they don’t believe in your capability, and see you as someone who can help them develop, then you will struggle.

Rebecca Irving joined us last year and fundamentally changed the way we do business. She built almost instant credibility with the team. How?

• She brought a depth of knowledge not just in people ops, but also consulting, fundamental to the way we do business. She immediately set about making big changes to the way that we work, and demanded a high level of quality and velocity. As a leader it’s not just what you know but how you apply it to the approach of solving problems and creating outcomes.
• This allowed the team to see just how much they would benefit by learning from her. They bought into the high bar and i’ve seen everyone raise their game — she forced me to do so as well.
• As a new manager — you can use that depth of knowledge and expertise you have built up to foster trust by setting a high bar and holding yourself to it. You won’t gain credibility by trying to be everyone’s friend and letting bad work become acceptable. Instead, being clear, open and approachable, backed up by your knowledge will serve you well.

Communication and transparency

• How, where, when, what you communicate is critical in a startup full of ambiguity
• Create transparency by setting expectations, sharing the right information, giving context, addressing difficulties head on and inviting feedback
• This applies at manager <> employee, manager <> team, leader <> dept and company <> employee levels
• You need to hear and ACT on upwards feedback to you
• All of this is hard unless done from the top
• If lacking, you get disconnection, misconceptions, poor decisions, and it will massively hinder the company’s progress.

Solution:

There are three key parts to this:

1. Setting expectations across the organisation and departments. What is our Vision and Mission? What are our Goals? What information will we share? What do we expect from you? What can you expect from us? How will we communicate? What channels will we used? How do we balance quality and velocity? Who is responsible for what outcome? How do we measure success? What is the employee deal — do we pay high but expect the world, or pay less and give flexibility?

2. Setting expectations and creating space with your team. How do we communicate? What does great work look like? What information and context do you need from me to do great work? What information will I share and what information will i not? Can I be open about failure? What do we value as a team? Where should we work? What hours do you expect?

Answering these questions at org, dept, team and individual level, and you’re half the way there to solving the challenge.

On top of this, celebrate those successes when people go above and beyond these expectations — both in private and publicly 🎉

3. The other part comes from hearing that feedback and acting upon it.

• Solicit feedback from your team members. Assess the position, and if it needs acting on, or you can’t, just say.
• Then do the thing.
• The same applies at an organisational level. Folks mostly don’t mind if internal projects take some time as long as they know whats causing the delay or shift in focus. Which brings us to…

Being consistent

• Do what you say you’re going to do, when you say you’re going to do it
• If the company has promised to do something, it’s also your role as a broader management group to ensure it happens.
• This is critical — and something I have to work on every day as i’m terrible at it — I think the word is “disorganised”
• What happens if you don’t? Your team can’t have faith in you to get things done.

Solution:

As we talked about in communication, it’s all about showing up consistently and communicating context, being clear about deadlines.

• If, as a company, you say you’re going to review everyone’s pay in March, make sure you get it done.
• If, as a manager, you say you’re going to do a 1:1 at 10am each week with an employee, turn up and do it.

It’s sounds simple, because it is in theory, but in practise many humans find being consistent hard.

Ways to make it easier? Don’t overpromise on timelines. Don’t commit to a meeting you know you’ll always miss. Don’t promise to review pay when you don’t have the runway or budget to do so. Be organised, communicate and do the thing.

Additionally — give them context and connect everything back to the organisation needs and commercial plans. Make sure you know the answers to these questions so that the organisation can be consistent.

Being vulnerable doesn’t make you weak

• As a manager, striking the right balance between vulnerability and credibility can be challenging.
• Many new managers try to assert authority by acting strong, but this just makes you come across as weak.
• If you can’t be vulnerable, professionally and personally with your team, why would they do the same with you?
• If you don’t know their fears, desires, weaknesses, then how can you help them develop and grow?
• Worse, if you’re an obvious fake, or an asshole, they’ll just leave — fast.

Solution:

There are a couple of key things here.

1. On a personal level, you need to show that it’s ok to admit and talk about mistakes and failures

• Showing folks that it’s ok to make mistakes will help them own up to theirs.
• At the same time, we’re not talking about opening up on absolutely everything, it’s important to still have some boundaries — if you go too far, or be too casual, you can undermine your credibility.
• Instead, take the time to get to know your team. Ask them questions, tell them relatable stories, make them feel like it’s ok to share when they don’t know the answer by doing the same with them. Make it clear you’re there to support their growth, and mistakes are part of that journey.
• This helps to build a deeper personal connection.
• This video between Toto Wolff and Gareth Southgate is a great example.

Empower your team

• If you spend your whole time telling your team what to do instead of empowering and delegating, they won’t trust they can develop and grow
• Ensure they have the tools to be successful — if you don’t give them the context and tools, of course they’ll fail
• Don’t be a dictator. No-one likes a dictator, and they won’t trust you have their best interests at heart.
• If you don’t empower, you create a team of disenfranchised, frustrated and incapable employees.

Solution:

• Encourage them to discuss failure. Making mistakes is how you learn.

Trust is built when team members feel empowered to make decisions and take ownership of their work.

• Ensure you take time to work out what could be delegated effectively. Ask your team how they would solve problems, what they need from you etc.
• Encourage autonomy by delegating tasks and providing the necessary resources and support for team members to succeed. Foster shared responsibility by involving team members in decision-making processes and holding them accountable for their contributions.

Celebrate Success

• Recognising and celebrating successes is a powerful way to reinforce trust and team cohesion.
• Unfortunately companies and managers often forget to do this
• Or they celebrate the same, more visible people and teams over and over.
• This causes disillusionment and a sense of favouritism.

Solution:

• Regularly acknowledge and reward individual and team accomplishments, and create opportunities for team members to share their achievements with their peers.
• At the same time, create a culture of learning from failures. Use retros at a team level to share and understand what worked or what didn’t.
• Focus on team improvement — emphasise that you should look back on your work a year ago and be somewhat disappointed compared to now
• Focus on continuous improvement.
• Don’t shout at or blame people in public. Try not to shout at anyone in private either…

To conclude

Building and sustaining trust in your startup team is critical for fostering high performance and team cohesion. To do this you need to:

• Be a credible leader
• Communicate openly
• Be consistent
• Be vulnerable
• Empower your team
• Celebrate success

By doing each of these things just a little better each day, you’ll be well on your way to building a team where trust and psychological safety are a part of everyday life — improving retention, personal development, decision making and commercial outcomes.

If you would like to build your skills and capabilities, or think your managers could benefit, then get in touch about our manager development programme here:

Module: Manager Accelerator Programme