How to Build Trust on Your Team and Inside Your Company

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Nov 07, 2023, 10:10 ET

CEO Stephen Miles and Senior Consultant Maizie Nelson share The Miles Group's formula for building trust in and among leaders and their teams

NEW YORK, Nov. 7, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- "If you're someone who can build trust, you're able to get stuff done better, faster, smarter. People are attracted to you, people want to work with you, people want to work for you. And the outcome of that is less friction in the system, which helps the system be higher performing," says Stephen Miles, CEO of The Miles Group/TMG.

In their work with top-performing teams and companies, Miles and senior consultant Maizie Nelson know that trust is critical to creating environments that encourage high-performance. Together they share TMG's formula of how to build trust – on the latest podcast episode of C-Suite Intelligence, "Building Trust on Your Team and Inside Your Company."

"Without trust, there is no shared or mutual accountability, and teams do not have strong enough foundations to accomplish their goals," says Nelson. "Yet when you dig beneath the surface, many people cannot articulate what they and their teams actually need to do in order to form that trust."

8 Ways Leaders Can Build Trust:

Ask Me, Tell Me: a reciprocal framework to have each other's backs – if you are going into my business or function, ask me; if you hear something coming out of my business or function, tell me.
Empathy-based Relationships: when issues arise, people who assume good intent will engage with you and work to solve the problem in a supportive manner, oftentimes without wanting anything in return. These relationships also help to decrease coordination costs and increase the performance of the team.
Horizontal Leadership: look for ways to have shared successes with people and co-author outcomes. Investment in the success of others will help build trust between you and the team.
Listen for Content: engage in another person's point of view instead of just pushing your own. This signals that you value their content and ideas.
Seek and Take Advice: a powerful and affirming sign that you value others and their opinions. The challenge is to not just seek advice, but to consider and take that advice as appropriate.
Communicate: ineffective communication causes trust to erode. Practice "ask me, tell me," "seek and take advice," and other strategies to engage with key parties to build trust over time. Effective communications also create high context environments, which allow people to feel empowered to make decisions, prioritize, and sequence.
Manage Outcomes: instead of activating on a new stimulus, take a step back to understand the topic and how it fits within the broader context in which you operate. Think about who is affected, who needs to be included, and who needs to be consulted. By initially going slowly, this allows you to be inclusive and bring others into the situation if it will affect their area.
Keep the Back Door Shut: be hyper aligned as a team – be able to debate ideas together, but always publicly support decisions, strategy and your peers. This creates a powerful force that others will see and want to get behind.

"Building Trust on Your Team and Inside Your Company" is out now on Apple, Google, Spotify, TMG's website, or wherever you get your podcasts.

For more information, please contact executive producers Davia Temin or Trang Mar of Temin and Company at 212.588.8788 or [email protected].

About the C-Suite Intelligence podcast
CEOs running the world's top companies don't start out that way – they pull ahead of their peers with behaviors and practices that make them the "best of the best." Stephen Miles and the team at TMG coach some of the world's most successful executives, helping them continuously up their game even as business conditions grow more complex every day. Learn the secrets of the highest performers and use this intelligence to power your career. New episodes are released bi-weekly on Apple, Google, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

About The Miles Group/TMG
TMG develops talent strategies for organizations, teams, and individuals – focusing on high-performance, world-class leadership. Through assessments and development, coaching, leadership transition planning, and organizational design, TMG helps clients cultivate exceptional talent from the C-suite to the next generation of leaders throughout the organization. Clients include many of the Fortune 100 as well as VC portfolio companies, firms in transition, and organizations around the globe and across industries. TMG has been featured in Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Forbes, Fortune, C-Suite, Entrepreneur, and Chief Executive. The firm is headquartered in New York City and operates globally. For more information, visit https://miles-group.com. Follow TMG on LinkedIn and X, and Stephen Miles on Forbes.