Why Trust is so Important in Workplace Relationships

Human beings within a free market society hope to achieve success in life through all aspects, including their career. This can be a tricky course to navigate, considering such notable obstacles as a general malaise in the economy, a variety of personalities in co-workers so broad as to sometimes be difficult to work with, limited opportunities for entry-level positions, and various educational setbacks.Even when a person lands their "dream job" and begins working to earn that paycheck they will still, of course, encounter hurdles in their working life. Often, the office environment can be seen as a microcosm of the world, where a we're-all-in-this-together mentality can prove to be the winning difference. Forming valuable, rewarding, positive relationships with one's workplace peers can be a daunting task for some, but not to be underestimated in its essential quality, and one of the most significant components of great relationships is trust. As it turns out, there are a few primary reasons why trust is important in office relationships.

Deadlines

It is a fact that every time your supervisor provides you with a deadline for a project, or you request a task from another employee by a certain specified time, there is an element of trust being incorporated. The requester is trusting the requestee with the ability to effectively meet that deadline with a finished product. If it were not for trust, everyone would have to fend for their own workloads by themselves, which would be devastating for most businesses and create an unsustainable economic environment.

Communication

Trust and communication go hand-in-hand, as there are many elements of how the two combine. For instance, issues of confidentiality arise for most organizations, whether in their record-keeping, e-mails, accounting, or other sources. Trust is required in order to operate with both the in-house financial departments and hones dealings with customers and vendors alike. In addition, it comes up even in the simplest of situations, such as when your co-workers confides a facet of their personal life to you, trusting you not to reveal it to anyone else; or when you express your annoyance with someone to someone else, hoping that the secret is kept. You may be surprised, if you were to begin consciously keeping track, how inseparable trust and business communications can be.

Teamwork

It has become a buzzword devoid of the powerful punch it once packed: Teamwork. It is an elusive quality that countless businesses strive for, and even pour thousands of budgeted dollars in developing in their workers through seminars, workshops, teambuilding activities, and other exercises. But what even top-level supervisors may fail to realize is that teamwork cannot exist without trust. After all, teamwork is synonymous with work-sharing, the idea that people are sharing deadlines, communication, tasks, and the effort required to pull it all together. If there is no trust, teamwork breaks down; yet, too many focus on creating teamwork, rather than fixing the underlying lack of trust that was the true issue to begin with.

Trust can seen like a vaporous, intangible, unmeasurable concept to many, who have difficulty pinning it down in their personal life, much less having to worry about it at work. But rather than avoid it, deny it, or downplay it, it should be embraced as an essential ingredient in office relationships.