Building Unbreakable Teams: Why Both Trust and Psychological Safety Matter
The differences between trust and psychological safety – and why high-performing teams need both
In the fast-paced world of workplace culture, trust once stood as the towering pillar holding teams together. It was the focal point for leaders who understood the importance of building trusting relationships between team members. But as a new concept emerged on the horizon, it cast a shadow over the once-dominant theme of trust.
As the idea of psychological safety went mainstream, trust lost its status.
But the reality is far more complex. The question is not a binary one of trust vs. psychological safety. We must weave them together to create a robust and resilient team structure. Just like a suspension bridge requires solid columns and flexible steel cables, high-performing teams need both interpersonal and collective trust.
That's why I think it's helpful to first clarify the differences between the two constructs. Trust happens between two people, while psychological safety is something that happens within a group.
The diagram above shows that having psychological safety means your team climate makes it comfortable for you to be and express yourself. They will support you and won't judge, especially when you need help, think differently, or make a mistake.
Trust is the opposite. It happens between two people at an individual level: it’s the expectation that others' future actions will be favorable to your interest. You trust that a team member has the skills needed for the job, will keep their word, and will act professionally, ethically, and truthfully.
Trust and psychological safety feed off of each other – high-performing teams need both.
Imagine the dynamic design of a suspension bridge. Trust is like the towers of a bridge – they're strong and support a tremendous load at different points. Psychological safety is like the steel cables that hold the whole bridge together: They provide both strength and flexibility.
Because suspension bridges are relatively light and flexible, they are susceptible to external forces like wind. They vibrate and move, both up and down, as well as sideways. The challenge for engineers is to keep this motion within safe limits.
Trust and psychological safety should be approached with a dynamic mindset, not a perfectionist or rigid one. They are constantly evolving, supporting conflicting forces and tensions within a team – the things that bend, don’t break.
Trust: The Pillars of High-Performing Teams
"Can I trust you?"
The above is the number one question everyone is asking, according to The Trust Outlook.
Every human interaction is based on trust, whether consciously or unconsciously. Sometimes, trust is built over time through shared experiences and open communication. In other cases, it is an unspoken assumption that underpins our daily interactions.
For example, when you hand over your car keys to a valet parking attendant – a stranger – you trust that they will take good care of your vehicle and return it safely.
Trust is a strong pillar that supports well-functioning organizations – and societies. It's the ultimate currency in relationships, directly impacting collaboration and performance.
A recent study from Slack shows that feeling trusted in the workplace has the most significant impact on employee productivity. Trusted employees are significantly more likely to say they put in more effort at work and are more likely to go above and beyond.
"Companies across geographies and industries have been, for years, experiencing an erosion of trust," Christina Janzer, SVP of Research and Analytics at Slack, wrote. "Feeling trusted breeds hard work, which leads to more trust. This is a virtuous cycle all leaders can take advantage of to boost employee performance and well-being."
In an age where remote and hybrid work models are the norm, fostering trust has become even more essential. The pandemic has hit our ability to trust others. People don't feel safe going back to the office – and the damaging impact of the mandated return is worse than we thought.
Trust can be broken down into three essential pillars: Caring, Competence, and Consistency. The first two align with research on Cognitive Trust and Affective Trust.
Competence trust is intellectual; it's given on a professional basis. Caring trust, on the other hand, is a result of empathy, warmth, and integrity – it's about trusting your colleague as a human being.
Both Competence and Caring are necessary to build strong interpersonal relationships.
Competence: The confidence you feel in another person's accomplishments, expertise, and professional experience. It's about trusting your colleagues as professionals. It means assuming they have the right knowledge, skills, and abilities to perform their job well.
Caring: This involves believing in the good intent of others and feeling that your teammates have your back. It's thinking that a colleague has your back and is on your side, especially when you're not present. Much like the bedrock foundation of a bridge, without caring, trust becomes fragile and difficult to rebuild.
Consistency amplifies the other two dimensions: Trust requires people to act in a reliable manner, not just once but most of the time. Reliability and predictability in actions and behavior build confidence within the team. However, trust is not rigid but flexible. Trusting relationships can take some tension.
Competence trust comes from the head. Caring trust, on the other hand, arises from feelings of emotional closeness, empathy, or friendship. This type of trust comes from the heart.
Competence trust is important, but not as much as we think we do.
Of course, you want your colleagues to be proficient at what they do. But, even if they make a mistake, the relationship can recover. However, affective trust can be a deal breaker.
When someone feels unsupported or perceives malicious intent, the bond of trust is quickly shattered and may never fully recover. When you feel that someone doesn't have your best interests at heart, you will not only not trust them, but you'll actually distrust them.
Caring trust can make or break relationships with your colleagues.
Emotional gestures can make a big impact. Recent studies show that acknowledging other people's emotions can strengthen social relationships at work. Even better, acknowledging negative ones boosts trust more. People perceive emotional acknowledgment as an act that demands time, attention, and effort, especially when it comes to negative feelings.
If people perceive that you genuinely care, they'll be willing to give you a second chance. That said, authenticity is vital – if you try to manipulate people to look trustworthy, it will backfire.
Trust is a multifaceted concept, deeply ingrained in the dynamics of high-performing teams. While occasional failures in consistency or competence can be weathered, like a bridge standing strong amidst a storm, the loss of caring or affective trust is a significant blow which is often irreparable.
Trust is necessary to build strong interpersonal relationships. A team is as strong as its weakest link. However, trust is not enough; high-performing teams need psychological safety, too.
Why Psychological Safety Is Vital for Team Resilience
Psychological safety, the steel cables in our suspension bridge analogy, goes beyond individual connections to include the whole team's environment. It's not about creating a safety bubble, as I wrote here, but promoting open debate, experimentation, and risk-taking.
Research shows that even people who may be naturally more inclined to raise ideas and offer suggestions may not do so if they fear being put down or punished. On the flip side, encouraging and rewarding speaking up can increase participation, even among risk-averse people.
Psychological safety provides the flexibility and resilience that teams need to navigate the challenges and tensions on the path to innovation and growth.
Much like trust, psychological safety has essential components that must be cultivated and maintained. These elements are Dependability, Directness, and Daring.
Directness: A team's ability to engage in open and respectful discourse is crucial for creativity and problem-solving. Being straightforward and candid promotes a transparent environment that encourages people to be themselves and provide their perspectives.
Daring: Encouraging team members to be bold enough to take risks, express unconventional ideas, or question the status quo is pivotal for creativity and innovation. Just as the cables of a bridge support its structure while allowing for some movement, a culture of daring make exploration and growth possible. Team members should feel comfortable expressing differing opinions without fear of ridicule or judgment.
Dependability: This is the cornerstone of psychological safety. Dependability means knowing that the team is reliable and that you can count on it. Psychological safety crumbles when a team member feels unsupported or distrustful of the team's intentions.
Unlike other elements, a lack of dependability is hard to recover from. It's like a critical failure in the bridge's support system – once lost, the whole structure is compromised.
Psychological safety brings the team together, just like the wire cables of a suspension bridge.
The sum of these three components is necessary to achieve each of the three levels of the psychological safety ladder: Feeling welcome, courageous conversations, and innovation.
Understanding and cultivating Directness, Dependability, and Daring within a team creates an environment where individuals feel empowered to take risks, share ideas, and contribute to the team's shared goals.
Just like a suspension bridge remains strong yet flexible, able to absorb the forces of nature, a psychologically safe team can not only weather storms but also envision the future with confidence.
Building Bridges: Five Ways to Build Trust and Psychological Safety in Your Team
1. Experience the Physics of Trust
"Compression" and "tension" are the two main forces affecting a suspension bridge. Experiencing them firsthand can help you understand how trust and psychological safety work. Grab a colleague and try these two exercises.
First, face your partner and join hands. Slowly and carefully lean backward without letting go. Do you feel a tug? This force associated with pulling is the tension suspension bridge cables experience.
Second, place your palms against your partner's. Slowly, carefully lean toward each other. What kind of pressure do you feel? That is compression – the pressure that bridge towers have to stand.
Reflect with your partner: What does this say about team dynamics?
2. Assess Team Relationships
Establishing trusting, meaningful relationships is essential to your team's success.
List all key relationships that are critical for your success. Link them all to you, assessing which are Unbreakable, Strong, Weak, or Broken.
Reflect on the different types of relationships considering how they've evolved over time. Find common themes and characteristics of your best and worst relationships.
Finally, strategize. Which relationships do you want to protect, improve, or leave as is? Define concrete action steps for each.
Download the exercise template and step-by-step guide here.
3. Check Your Trust Battery
Some people start new relationships with a full trust battery – they think trust should be granted. Others believe trust should be earned; they begin with an empty battery. A trust battery is personal: Every team member can fall anywhere in between the full/empty spectrum.
Invite your team members to map their trust battery. Discuss their approach: Is trust earned, given, or a combination of both?
Also, reflect on how fast their battery fills or empties. The starting point is just one part of the equation; what builds or erodes trust is equally important.
Remember, trust is a personal thing. You can’t force people to change their approach. However, you can become more aware of each member’s battery and what drives or sucks their energy.
4. Promote a Blameless Culture
Promoting psychological safety requires replacing blameless with curiosity – great leaders ask powerful questions instead of pointing fingers. Rather than finding and punishing culprits when something goes wrong, blameless cultures look for the root problem.
Just cultures see mistakes as an indicator that something in the system is broken or encourages people to take the wrong path. The goal is to shift the conversation from "Who will be fired?" to "What went wrong?" and make systemic improvements.
Conducting a blameless postmortem requires a deliberate mindset: Assuming good intentions, focusing on facts rather than perceptions, identifying causes instead of culprits, and maintaining a consistent, blameless approach across the discussion.
By focusing on improving performance rather than judging people (and addressing the system), a blameless postmortem helps to create a culture of continuous improvement and innovation.
Download the template and facilitation guide.
5. Turn Feedback into a Helpful Gift
Unsolicited feedback is not only ineffective but also harms trust. One of the best ways to turn feedback into a gift is to promote a culture where people not only request feedback but also the type of feedback they want
Feedback can come in many shapes and forms. For example, you might need help reframing the problem, asking better questions, or brainstorming possible solutions. Coaching team members to be more intentional about requesting feedback and clarifying the help they need not only helps them but also the giver.
Being proactive and requesting feedback creates a virtuous cycle. Little by little, everyone will join the movement promoting a culture of frequent, peer-to-peer feedback. Also, giving it in smaller chunks will ensure that this feedback is easier to digest. Thus, promoting a safer team environment.
The more intentional, customized, and helpful the feedback, the better. It increases trust between the giver and the receiver.
Learn more about The 5 R's of Feedback framework.
A suspension bridge is a marvel of engineering, with towering columns and sweeping curves of steel cables that provide both strength and flexibility. Like a high-performing team, it is a system designed to absorb and adapt to various forces, tensions, and movements.
Trust and psychological safety aren't just static concepts; they’re alive and dynamic. Trust ensures that individual relationships within the team are strong and resilient, while psychological safety ensures that the entire system functions in harmony, absorbing tensions and fostering creativity.
To build an unbreakable team, you need both.
If you’re wondering how I can help your team build trust and promote psychological safety, schedule a free consultation with me.