Trust is the bedrock of any successful team. When you’re on a team founded on trust, you’re much more likely to share ideas, take risks and support your team members. Building trust requires open communication, transparency, and a commitment to creating a supportive culture. It also requires self-awareness and a willingness to meet others where they are.
Personality traits significantly influence how individuals interact and collaborate within a team. When team members have complementary personalities, they can leverage their strengths and mitigate weaknesses. For example, if you have strong attention to detail, you could pair well with a big-picture thinker, or if you’re quick-moving and eager for fast results, you may work effectively with someone who has stamina and tenacity for the long haul.
Different personalities provide opportunities for us to benefit from others’ strengths and compensate for their weaknesses, and for them to do the same with us. However, it’s important to recognize that personality clashes can also occur. Understanding and appreciating individual differences is key to building trust and working through conflict in a productive way.
What makes up personality traits?
Personality or behavioral traits are enduring patterns of thought, feeling, and action that characterize our responses to the environment. In a work setting, these traits impact the type of responsibilities that appeal to you, what you find motivating, how you approach a project or assignment, and how you build relationships. While some preferences may shift over time and with experience, personality traits tend to stay relatively consistent over time and across situations.
People’s behavioral traits and how they play out in team situations can have a strong influence on the development of trust within that team.
Here are some examples of how that could play out:
- If you’re a helpful and agreeable person, you may get a feeling of satisfaction by helping the team. When your efforts are valued and reciprocated, trust is built. But if that helpfulness is taken advantage of, not reciprocated, or not acknowledged by other members of the team, that can hinder trust building.
- If you’re a big-picture person, you can offer creative, high-level solutions that help the team achieve goals. You could team up with a detail person who helps bring the project home so that everyone wins. However, if you never consider the details or you try to delegate too much, that could breed resentment. Conversely, you could feel stifled if others on the team are so focused on details or processes that they’re unwilling to consider new ideas.
- What if you’re an introvert working with extroverts? When a team is made up of both introverts and extroverts, it’s necessary to take both into consideration when it comes to communication. If all ideas and input are solicited in public at meetings, introverted personalities may never get a voice. On the other hand, if everything is decided in writing (via email or chat), extroverts may feel left out. Trust is built when everyone on the team feels heard and included.
Self-awareness is critical.
For the individual team member, the key to being a valued and trustworthy member of the group means understanding yourself and the ways you are most comfortable contributing. But it also means being willing to step outside of your comfort zone to help (for example, by doing a task that you may dread to give someone else a break or a helping hand).
Self-awareness is vital to learning how to do both. When team members understand how their behaviors might impact others they can adjust accordingly. By staying in touch with their strengths and weaknesses, team members can work to build trust and create a positive and productive work environment.
Tools like behavioral assessments can supercharge self-awareness. The Omnia Development Profile, which is based on the Omnia Behavioral Assessment, can provide insight into individual personalities, strengths, challenge areas, preferences, motivators, and how they all play out in a work setting. It also provides tips about what to be aware of when it comes to interacting with others.
The beauty of diversity among personalities is that we all have strengths and weaknesses. Nobody is perfect and no trait is perfectly suited to every situation. If you’re assertive, you can take the lead with confidence, but you need to understand when it’s best not to so other people have a chance to shine. If speaking up comes naturally to you and you find it fun, you can introduce new concepts and topics of conversation and foster engagement. But you need to see when your own silence would give someone less outgoing an opportunity to share. When we are self-reflective and self-aware, we can have more compassion for our teammates’ needs and appreciation for what they bring to the table.
How can leaders help?
By recognizing and appreciating the unique contributions of each individual, managers can create a sense of belonging and value. Additionally, addressing challenge areas in a supportive and constructive manner can help team members grow and develop, strengthening trust and collaboration.
To build trust among team members, leaders need to foster a safe and inclusive environment where everyone feels valued and respected. This requires open communication, empathy, and a commitment to fairness. By creating a culture of trust and respect, managers let team members feel empowered to share their ideas, take risks, and support one another.
Personality clashes may still occur even when team members practice self-awareness and feel trusted to be themselves. Working through this kind of conflict is an important part of team development, and members should generally be encouraged to resolve small matters on their own.
Leaders can give teams the tools they need to work through clashes by providing opportunities for team-building activities and training on conflict resolution skills. If intervention is necessary, they can help best by encouraging team members to express their perspectives, listen actively, and seek common ground.
It comes back to trust.
Without trust, there is no team, just a group of people doing the tasks assigned to them. That’s the perfect recipe for things to fall through the cracks and for lackluster results. If you trust the people on your team, you’re more willing to step up when they’re having a bad day, and they are willing to do the same to you.
Trust is built when both team members and leaders approach teamwork from an understanding that we all have something to contribute and we all have something to overcome to be successful. Being willing to be self-aware and self-reflective is the best way to maintain the trust essential to a successful team.
If you’re interested in learning more about how Omnia can help build effective teams, or if you want to explore our Omnia Development Profiles to enhance self-awareness for all team members, contact us today.
