Aspects of trust in a team checklist

Do you think people in your team trust each other? If you do, well, maybe it’s because you see trust as one-dimensional quality rather than what it is – many-dimensional quality. As almost anything, even trust can be understood within the 4 aspects – physical, mental, emotional/social and spiritual. And there are various sub-aspects of trust in each of the 4 aspects. The checklist provides many important questions whether people a team trust each other.

Physical aspect

• All team members usually complete things on time 
• All team members usually complete things within planned resources 
• I consider my colleagues to be responsible and disciplined 
• All team members deliver what they promise and they don’t promise what they can’t deliver 
• All team members take responsibility for their actions and mistakes when they make some 

Mental aspect 

• All team members do high quality and efficient work 
• Discussions with colleagues are reasonable and constructive even when we don’t agree with each other 
• All team members can help me when I need it
• All team members have high standards on work and they try to continuously improve
• We support each other in growth within the team 
• We can solve disagreements and conflicts within the team before those disagreements and conflicts grow into big troubles 
• We give feedback to each other regularly within the team, I personally can accept negative feedback and improve based on it and I think others can do that as well

Emotional and social aspect 

• I feel well around my colleagues, I enjoy our cooperation and I believe they enjoy cooperation with me 
• I care about colleagues as individuals and I am interested in them as in people, not just coworkers 
• I feel that colleagues care about me and are interested in me as in an individual/person 
• I can talk with colleagues about personal matters 
• I don’t have troubles admit my vulnerability and mistakes around colleagues 
• I behave authentically in the team and don’t need to pretend anything – and I believe others have it the same 
• There is no person in my team I don’t like to cooperate with 
• People in the team support each other 

Spiritual aspect 

• I care about high-quality work and helping customers and I feel colleagues do as well 
• I treat others – team members, other employees, customers, shareholders, and other stakeholders – with dignity and respect and I believe so do all other team members 
• I don’t recall a single time when I tried to hurt someone or when someone tried to hurt me
• I consider all my colleagues to be good people with high moral standards 
• Management acts fairly towards all people and has the same standards on all people 
• There are minimum politics in the team 
• I feel that all people in my team care more about people, relationships and/or results than about their own ego needs and personal comfort 

Do you think all the people in your team will give positive answers to all of the above questions? Well, that would be ideal, but even if there are a few negative answers for each team member, it’s probably quite good. But if some people in your team have more than 7-8 negative answers (especially if they are in the spiritual aspect), there might be some big problem in your team. Feel free to make a survey (ideally anonymous) for your team and check for yourself.