Ashley Byrne reveals some hard truths about the true meaning of faith and the ‘incalculable’ benefits of having a team that feels trusted.
“I trust my team”, it is said so often. But how many employers fully trust their team? When we say, ‘I trust my team’, what do we really mean? More importantly, what does this mean for the employee?
Did you know that a recent study found that employees who felt truly trusted produced up to 50% more? Yet fewer than one in three people truly trust their employer… Trust in a team is the foundation of any outstanding organization and, when used well, it has the power to enable that team to achieve almost anything.
But what is trust and how can employees and team leaders use trust to benefit a dental laboratory?
What is faith?
When we talk about trust, I don’t mean putting your wallet aside and it still being there at the end of the day. If it’s not there at the end of the day, the problem is way beyond the solutions in this article!
Trust is vital in an employee and essential in a team if you plan to make waves in any industry. It comes in countless forms, from time keeping to decision making.
But in an industry ruled by perfectionists and artists, you might be surprised how challenging ‘full’ trust in your team is to achieve and manage.
If we start with individuals, certain levels of trust are expected from the start. Get up on time, do your job, don’t call in sick for no reason, etc. However, employers often fail on the first day without even realizing the error of their ways.
Do your employees feel trusted?
As an employer, we really need to consider how trust is perceived by the individual. A prime example of mistrust is timestamps or ‘logins’ to show that employees arrive on time and complete required hours.
While this basic approach is used by many organizations to monitor employees, it is seen by many as ‘you don’t trust me to do my hours’. And you can see why.
In this modern world of flexible working hours and working from home, it can be very difficult to track hours and it is debatable whether this is an effective measure of productivity. This is why trust is so key to making flexible and hybrid arrangements work, and employees who work on a flexible arrangement are four times more likely to stay with you.
Therefore, trust also plays a key role in retaining talent.
A trusted team
I myself have a hybrid work situation, which means I work from home most Fridays and have done so for over six years. For this to work, I must explicitly trust my team to do their work in the lab without me, show up on time, deliver high-quality work, and make key decisions.
We trust people to do flextimes, we don’t follow their hours, but we expect a quality product.
Some of you may now be thinking, ‘Well, it’s not that easy, and what about people who are regularly late?’ This is when a trusted team comes into its own. A trusted team works cohesively and there will be a natural pressure to emulate team behaviors.
People who try to break that trust or don’t follow the general tone will usually change their attitude, simply because no one else is doing it. People like to be part of a community and often have a down-to-earth mentality. Being the only person who breaks that trust results in either positive change or isolation.
If isolation occurs, they usually don’t stay on the team for long. This is just one benefit of a trusted team, however getting to that point is no easy task. It takes time and effort, and once it’s established, it takes dedication to maintain, but it’s awfully easy to lose.
Letting go
Confidence in a lab comes in all areas. From quality control to customer calls, invoicing, trusting a non-technical employee with schedules and allowing your team to check the quality of other team members’ work constructively.
Trust is letting go, and for any business owner, that’s incredibly difficult. You set your standard, you set your way of working, and your lab becomes a text font. You want all work to be like that font, but when someone else’s font doesn’t quite match, we step in and change that person’s work.
If we adjust everything in a controlling way, trust is not built, but eroded a little with each tweak. We always have to control the quality, but we also have to expand our minds and allow people’s styles to integrate into our business.
There isn’t a day that goes by in my lab where a call, type of work, email, etc. might not be the way I would have done it, but I have to let go and trust my team to make those decisions . If I think it’s outside the acceptable range of a standard I’ve set, then I need to do more training.
We don’t criticize – we train and grow.
The key to building trust
When the work comes out untouched by anyone other than the technician who did it, tremendous trust is built. This trust builds trust, encourages more challenging work to be done, more difficult decisions to be made, and a development of the person and team unity.
That’s building trust right there, and the ability for the lab owner to step away and safely let the team make those challenging decisions is what builds a great business.
We have to accept that bad decisions will be made, work will be poor, a terrible phone call will be made, and an email will be read that will make you cringe. They can end up with a disappointed customer and it’s easy to shift the blame to the person or the team.
But the moment the blame shifts from the lab owner to the team member, all trust can be lost if handled poorly. A strict culture of non-blame is key to trust. Mistakes in your company must be acknowledged and the responsibility lies with the leader. The solution is training, not guilt, and that can be hard for us as perfectionist lab owners to accept.
Great reward
Trust can be achieved in countless ways. But however it is achieved, the benefits are incalculable. It allows the lab owner to take the business in any direction with the full support of the team because they trust your decisions.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve gained trust over the years and lost it in a heartbeat. It’s always a learning curve and every year we get better. However, it is truly worth the time and effort because the rewards will far exceed any new car, material or customer.
I’ll leave you with a quote that sums up my view on trust in business. It’s from a contributor named Pete Caroll who said: ‘Highly successful performers in business and sports demonstrate a level of confidence and understanding that separates them from their competition.’
Trust your team and you’ll see immediate results that allow you to accomplish almost anything.
This article first appeared on The laboratory. To receive a copy, register with Dentistry Club.
