We need to talk

In the past, we have discussed the importance of trust. It is a nice layer to build things upon it. But as mentioned, it requires constant feeding to keep it stable enough or even growing.

Trust can grow when there is a tough situation, then you step up and help the person or team affected. Now you only need a tough situation every now and then, right? Isn't it what we all want? Maybe there is a less situational and stressful methodology. Something we can do every day to nurture it.

Being honest and transparent.

It is straightforward; in case of doubt, you should always choose to be honest and transparent. Share as much as you can, even with the little details that might not even affect the team. Recognize when you don't have an answer to a question but come back later with it or delegate to another person to get it for the team.
Once you start practicing it, it should come easy most of the time (I'm afraid the temptation will always be present). There are a few obstacles to this:

Companies are not used to it. It's been a long tradition of not sharing info unless it is actually needed for your work. This gives some people a false sense of control. But the truth is that information is like a river and always finds its way into the ocean. You might get to keep it contained for a while, but it leaks. Take salaries, for example; they are treated as highly sensitive info, but there is no single place where I've worked where I didn't get to know a few people's salaries. I wasn't even asking for the info freely shared over a coffee or some other casual conversation. And then there are companies like Buffer, which makes their salaries public, and I don't think they get a very negative impact from it.

We tend to avoid difficult conversations. Whenever we have bad news, or the topic may trigger unhappy responses, we are tempted not to share the info. We are only delaying the difficult conversation.

If you keep at it, you'll have those difficult conversations earlier and in a more controlled manner. The upside of that trust and honesty is that people will know that you don't have a secret agenda and that your intentions are good, even during the hardest times. This helps a lot in driving the conversation instead of fighting it.
And, instead of trying to control information, you'll share more, and this will trigger conversations that might be useful that would have never happened otherwise.

Don't get me wrong, being honest and transparent doesn't mean you have to tell everything at the very exact moment you learn it. You get to choose the moment and how to share the information. Sometimes information is not yet ready to be shared, but it is essential you are not communicating as a last resort and being forced to share.

If you are still not convinced, consider the example about Buffer above. Do you think any of their employees feel wronged by their salary? Most likely not. But even if, at some point, someone believes something is not working, they can have a very open conversation about it. One without going into that "you should have negotiated better" phrase I hear whenever there is a concern about salaries. If there is something wrong with someone's wages, we need to be able to talk about it openly with the people around us or to praise the company because we feel they have a good policy around it.

Some information might be sensitive, but we tend to overprotect it, and most companies' culture encourages it. By doing that, we do very little service to those around us.

I definitely try to be more open and honest about what's going on. A silly example is this blog, where I try to share my humble experience in case it helps someone else, and with that, I hope you trust me a bit more ;)

Takeaways

• Honesty and transparency will directly feed the trust of those around us.
• By doing so, we enable conversations.
• Don't avoid tough conversations.
• No detail is too small to share.