Effective working relationships are based on trust, there are behaviours that break trust and behaviours that build it among teams and management. If your boss doesn’t seem to confide in you, then you may be doing things wrong. Here are some ways to ensure that you can gain and maintain trust in the workplace:
- Follow through on your responsibilities
Sometimes, you are given an important deadline and you need to follow it through. You may erode trust by over-promising and under-delivering. If you are not capable of doing things alone, it is a good idea to ask for help. You need to know about the causes of sub-par work and poor performance. If this happens, you will slowly break down trust and it will not be possible to successfully handle future assignments. If you continue to miss the deadline and under-deliver, the boss won’t trust you anymore.
- Accept responsibility for any mistakes
You shouldn’t blame unwanted circumstances on others and make excuses all the time. Often, it is time to accept accountability and responsibility for your mishaps. You need to admit it when things go wrong. Everyone knows that mishaps will happen and if you acknowledge it, you may retain respect and trust from your colleagues. You need to set a good standard for the whole team.
- Get along well with the entire team
You lose trust from your boss, if your actions tear down the whole team, managers want team members to support one another. If you continue to criticize your fellow team members your boss won’t consider you as a top performer. The boss won’t see you in a favourable light if you keep on complaining about the performance of your teammates. Your boss wants the whole team to get along and if you complain a lot, then your boss may think that you are the source of the problem. Instead of tearing the whole team down, you should step up and act like a good leader. Try to lead a small section of the team to accomplish a task. If you consistently do this, you will earn a huge respect from the boss.
- Find solutions and stop complaining
You need to seek solutions, instead of focusing on the obstacles. If you focus too much on problems, you can become frustrated easily and complain constantly. The boss will gain trust in your overall ability if you make real progress. You need to implement solutions and focus on making progress, regardless of the challenges. You want your work colleagues and manager to see you as a pioneer who makes way for others.
- Be honest
Honesty is essential if you want to gain trust. You shouldn’t twist or exaggerate the truth. Employers are smart enough to suspect that you are hiding the truth and this could have a negative consequence. Mistakes will happen and you should use them as effective learning opportunities, you may offend people in the workplace if you do it’s essential to apologize immediately. You can earn respect only if you are being honest and sincere. If employers find out that you lie blatantly all the time and hide the truth, then you may lose trust permanently.
- Stay away from office drama
Gossips and any kind of negativity in the workplace can be quite distracting. It is not a good idea to participate in such a drama. If you do this all the time, a ripple effect will be created and the office culture will be affected. The boss is often too busy to deal with drama when a potential drama seems to be brewing you should nip it the bud or at least mind your own business.
A trusty employee should have good character and show competence consistently. You should know that mending broken trust is difficult, you need to do things properly and maintain trust all the time.
This post was written and supplied on behalf of The Institute of Executive Assistants and Administrators, a London based Institute that offers office manager training.