Trust in teams is both simpler and more complex than we often make it. Simpler because it emerges naturally from good teamwork practices. More complex because it’s highly contextual, specific to the work we do together, and tied to demonstrated performance rather than general personal characteristics.
The conventional wisdom says trust is the foundation of high-performing teams. Something that we cultivate as a general relationship quality through “trust building exercises”. What if this is a fundamental misunderstanding and explains why so many of these well-intentioned activities fail to improve team performance?
When a plumber comes to your house, you trust them to fix your plumbing problems. You wouldn’t trust them to do your taxes or babysit your children. And if they botch the repair, you won’t trust them with your plumbing again, no matter how well you know or like them as a person.
This simple example reveals something profound about trust we often miss in workplace teams: trust is contextual, specific, and emerges through delivering work well, together.
Our seven-year field study of what makes great teams produced an unexpected finding. Using structural equation modelling to establish true causal relationships rather than just correlations, we found that when teams perform well, positive dynamics like trust, psychological safety, and inclusion emerge. The causal arrow points from performance to trust, not the other way around.
This finding was genuinely surprising and challenged our assumptions about how teams develop. It prompted us to dig deeper into other research examining the directional relationship between trust and performance.
What we discovered was illuminating. While the positive relationship between trust and team performance is well-established through extensive research, including a comprehensive meta-analysis of 112 studies representing over 7,700 teams, most of this research examines correlation rather than causal relationships. Recent studies acknowledge the bidirectional nature of this relationship, with longitudinal research beginning to examine how trust develops through successful team interactions over time. Our structural equation modelling findings align with this emerging understanding that trust develops as a result of successful team performance rather than driving it.
Yet despite this evolving evidence base, the “trust first” approach persists in most organisational development programs, perhaps because it aligns with our intuitive beliefs about relationships and team building.
Here’s the irony: while “build trust” sounds practical, it’s actually quite vague. Teams are left wondering: “How exactly?” Trust-building exercises feel like action and can build stronger bonds between teammates, but often don’t lead to improved team performance. In contrast, focusing on the practical realities of the work the team must do, and how the work is done, is both more actionable and more effective at creating sustainable trust.
Consider what trust practically means in work teams:
Notice how specific and contextual these elements are. They’re all about how we work together to accomplish shared objectives.
In workplace teams, trust operates differently than relational trust in families or friendships outside of work. The trust required isn’t unconditional or broadly generalised; it’s highly specific to the work context and goals the team exists to achieve.
This contextual nature explains why trust-building exercises often fail. They may successfully create connections outside the work context, but trust in teams is earned through delivering work well, together.
Our research has found that both clarity of context and intentional and consistent practices build trust.
Clarity of context includes being clear on what the team needs to do, the roles and responsibilities of team members, and our expectations of each other in doing this work.
Our analysis has revealed three critical practices that consistently lead to improved team performance and increased trust in teams:
Accountability: Teams in which members individually, and the team collectively, follow through on commitments, and hold each other to shared standards develop trust through reliability.
Creative Collaboration: Teams that actively seek different perspectives, learn from mistakes, and engage in healthy debate about ideas create conditions where trust flourishes.
Clear Operations: Teams that have transparent decision-making processes and actively manage and guide the work of the team remove the ambiguity that can erode trust.
These aren’t trust-building exercises. They are effective ways of working together. Trust emerges as a result.
We’re not saying trust isn’t important in teams. It absolutely is. Trust is highly correlated with team performance, so if it’s missing, your team is not high performing.
While trust emerges from performance, it also serves as a valuable early warning system. When trust is absent or eroding, it signals that something fundamental upstream is missing or not working in your team.
Low trust might indicate unclear goals or roles, inconsistent follow-through, poor decision-making processes, or sub-optimal ways of working. Rather than addressing trust directly, effective interventions focus on these underlying contextual and operational issues.
Our research supports the idea that high-performing teams have high levels of trust – with an important clarification: these feelings are contextual and emergent rather than absolute and foundational. This reality about trust in teams fundamentally changes how we approach team development.
Instead of asking “How do we build trust?” we should ask:
Are our goals clear and focused on both achievement and learning?
Do we have intentional and consistent practices for working together?
Are we effectively delivering on our goals in the context of our work?
When trust is low, what might be the root cause?
It’s like the relationship between fitness and happiness: people often report feeling happier when they get fitter, but we don’t tell people to get fit by doing things that make them happy. We focus on concrete practices of exercise and nutrition, and happiness follows.
Perhaps it’s time to stop trying to build trust and start building the conditions where trust develops naturally through doing good work together.
The most actionable approach isn’t to build trust, it’s to create the conditions where trust can emerge through focused, effective collaboration towards shared goals.
This article is part of our series sharing breakthrough insights from TopTeams – a team assessment and development approach founded on a comprehensive study conducted over more than seven years working with real teams in the real world. Our study combined longitudinal qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis with expert coaching and development interventions to uncover what really defines and drives team performance. Unlike traditional team research conducted in labs or based on survey data alone, our study tracked teams through their daily work, measuring their performance over time and working with them directly to improve. The result? A statistically validated model that reveals both the factors of team performance, and the causal relationships between those factors. The insights we have uncovered as a result are both profound and sometimes surprising.
