Trust: The Key to Collaboration

By Dr Mike Talbot, EU Mediation CEO and Founder

It was interesting to note recently the latest Eurobarometer survey, which told us that EU citizens are experiencing the highest levels of trust in the European Union since 2007. Some aspects of these highest scores in seventeen years are things such as:

• Trust in the EU as an institution: that the EU has sufficient power and tools to defend the economic interests of Europe in the global economy, and that it is a place of stability
  

• A sense of belonging: people feeling as though they are citizens of the EU, and are part of a bigger whole
  

• A general positivity: people holding a positive image of the EU and being optimistic about its future

All of this got me thinking about the place of trust within organisations, and more specifically, within teams and work groups, and what this might all have to do with conflict.

Firstly, a question about trust: would the people that make up your own company or institution say that they trust the organisation, that they feel as if they belong, and that they are generally positive and optimistic about it? If so, then your high-trust environment (mirroring the EU!) is likely to both experience less workplace conflict, but to be able to address it quicker and more effectively.

In a high-trust work environment, we tend to both assume that others have good intent, and we anticipate that they would see that we have good intent as well. So, if we challenge or are challenged, we take it well; dialogue can happen, we tend to listen to each other, we can problem-solve together without it feeling like a competition, and we believe that colleagues will be open and honest with each other.

Where trust is lower, however, people can start to infer that colleagues have bad intentions, hidden agendas, or ulterior motives. Challenge and contentious debate are taken badly, and people can consequently hold back on saying anything controversial. Moreover, problem-solving can be greatly stifled because people expect that, should anything go wrong with a discussion, plan, or solution, what will follow will be a blame-game, in which fingers are pointed and trust eroded even further.

Building and maintaining trust in a team or organisation takes a lot of work, but the rewards are there. Paul Zak’s research, reported in Trust Factor: The Science of Creating High-Performance Companies, showed that high-trust organisations enjoy greater productivity and engagement, along with fewer sick days and less burnout. He has even showed that they have better economic performance.

We at EU Mediation would argue that a key factor in building and maintaining trust is how we prevent and resolve conflict. Whether on the shop floor, in management teams, or at board level, there needs to be regular healthy dialogue, especially around contentious issues, and a sense of collaboration replacing competition.

Mediators do a great job of getting people to enter into conflict-resolving discussions in good faith, creating an environment where people can say the unsayable, and building collaboration away from the blame-game. Not only can mediation solve the immediate dispute but it can also future-proof a working relationship: letting people see that contentious topics can be raised and discussed: nobody has to feel that they have won or lost, and the more dialogue they can have, the greater the level of interpersonal trust they build.

So, if you are hoping to build trust in your organisation, perhaps to mirror the EU’s improved sense of trust, belonging and positivity, even to improve your bottom line, how about starting to think like a mediator?