Trust and Interpersonal Relationships
The purpose of this paper is to answer the two questions below.
When working in teams, is trust assumed or do team members have to earn trust?
How trust is lost when working in teams and how to keep trust and team members?
In my opinion, trust is not assumed but need to be earned over time. Trust is crucial for a team to achieve smooth operations and plays a basic part in the success of the team (MCB journal, 2003). Trust is earned over time by sharing experiences and feelings and by the open communication. Rogers (1995) stated it is important for the team leaders to share their feelings and beliefs so that the employees can get a clear picture of their values and expectations. In short, to build trust within the teams, the leaders and employees must get to know each other.
Rogers (1995) simply describes trust as confidence. According to him, trust is “confidence that others′ actions are consistent with their words, that those people with whom you work are concerned about your welfare and interests apart from what you can do for them, that the skills you have developed are respected and valued by your co-workers and the larger organization, and that who you are and what you believe truly matter in the workplace”. From this statement, we can say that trust can be lost when this confident is collapsed. Trust loss in teams could happen in multiple ways. Trust could be lost when a member doesn’t take their duties seriously, doesn’t complete the assigned tasks, doesn’t respect other’s opinions and beliefs, or doesn’t appreciate what the other members do. Lack of acceptance and ignorance of individual differences causes trust loss. In order to maintain trust among the team, we need to keep open communication, acceptance of influence, and forbearance from opportunism (Costa, 2003). I believe that open and clear communication gives opportunities to know individual’s thoughts and personalities, resulting in less...