According to Stephen B. King, a facilitator who wrote an article titled ‘Building trust among members of a work team: One facilitator's experiences’ (2000), he believes that trust has to be earned; it cannot be assumed among team members. Building trust among team members is not an easy mission, but is substantial to the success and cohesion of a team. His experience as a facilitator with a team of employees from the Penn State University library led him to question, ‘when working in teams, is trust assumed or do team members have to earn trust?’ In the interest of determining an answer to his question, King facilitated several surveys to assess how trust affects interpersonal relationships among team members. In addition to that, this paper will also take into consideration what teams must do when trust is lost and how to keep trust among team members. This paper will use some of the ideas put forth by King in his article coupled with other researches to provide some justification to the questions put forth.
When working in teams, is trust assumed or do team members have to earn trust? The aforementioned paragraph referenced that building trust in a team environment is not an easy task. However, trust is essential to the effectiveness and success of teams. “Trust is a fragile thing: it takes time to build and it can be destroyed instantly. It is important to keep all team members in the loop” (Serrat, 2009). Olivier Serrat is the principal knowledge management specialist in the Regional and Sustainable Development Department of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), and the concurrent Head of ADB's Knowledge Management Center. He believes that trust is one of the most important foundations in developing a successful team.
