It's that time of year when many companies and people are reflecting over the past year and looking ahead into the new year. Healthy organizations share this important characteristic: they take time to reflect and extract the lessons from the experiences of the previous year while also looking into the coming year and planning how to prioritize what will be of strategic importance. I’m privileged to lead these kinds of sessions for quite a number of companies; I get a glimpse into teams that are performing at high levels and others that are really struggling. At the foundation of all high-performing teams is a high level of trust—vulnerability-based trust.

Everyone wishes we could live in a high-trust world and work in a high-trust culture. However, the reality is that most of us have been “burned” in situations where we trusted people who failed to be worthy of that trust. Those experiences make it easy to settle into some form of cynicism about people in general; and naturally, that perspective will carry over into the teams in which we work. Such lines as “If you want it done right, you’ve got to do it yourself” or “Why bother? It won’t last” flow from these experiences.

High trust teams, though, have a distinct advantage over low trust teams. High trust teams are “sticky” teams, where people enjoy working with their teammates and are motivated to bring their best to work. High trust teams move faster, are far more efficient, and achieve much better results than teams where trust is low. This is what Patrick Lencioni describes (in his book The Advantage) when he observes that trust is a multiplier of a team’s intelligence and the foundation of organizational health.

Initially, talking about high trust teams makes people’s eyes glaze over. We know what broken trust looks like, but how to build it (or rebuild, once it has been lost) seems an elusive concept. Trust is an idea, and ideas can look hard to grasp and implement. Trust in particular feels very difficult to rebuild once it has been broken. Yet it is eminently quantifiable. In my work as an EOS Implementer (tongue-in-cheek job description: professional entrepreneurial peacemaker), I’ve noted that there are particular pathways through which trust is built and maintained, and there are tools accessible to anyone who is willing to do the hard work to build a high trust team. I’m deeply indebted to Patrick Lencioni and Stephen M. R. Covey specifically and many others generally who have helped shaped my understanding and would specifically recommend two books for your reading: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, by Patrick Lencioni and The Speed of Trust, by Stephen M. R. Covey.

Covey notes that in order to extend vulnerability-based trust to someone else, we need to have reasonable confidence in the person’s character and competence. In the world of EOS, we describe this concept as teammates needing to be “right people in right seats.” Let’s unpack this a bit.

First, when you are constructing a team, you need to build it with people who share your core values. They must be “good people” who don’t lie and cheat, of course. But they must also be able to not only share but articulate the values you hold, the core tenets that shape your business culture and guide your decision-making process. Without a team that is deeply aligned around shared values, trust will be extremely hard to build.

Not everyone is a good fit for your team. That doesn’t make them bad people, they just need to find another team. (If you’ve been reading this column for any length of time, you’ve heard this before. I say it again, because it is so critical.)

Secondly, one of the reasons you add people to your team is not to merely be carbon copies of you, but to bring skills, experience and perspectives that will complement yours. This will result in something better and stronger than you could have accomplished by “doing your thing” alone. In order for you to know that people are trustworthily competent, they must have a clearly identified function with plainly defined roles and be competent to do that work. (You can trust your wife completely and yet not trust her to wield a surgical knife when you need to have an appendectomy!) You want someone who “gets it, wants it, and has the capacity to do the job,” to use EOS terminology. If the person responsible for your business finances lacks the skills to prepare accurate financial reports, you will never be able to trust what he brings to you, no matter how much you like him as a person.

These two components are crucial to the foundation that must be laid for a truly high-trust team. Every member must be aligned around shared values and must be competent in the roles for which he is responsible. Otherwise, you will never be able to truly delegate to these people. You will always need to be looking over their shoulders and double-checking their work. Low trust and even distrust flourishes in these contexts.

Once you’ve done the work of building a team of character and competence, you must extend vulnerability-based trust to these people. As the leader, you model this and expect the same from your team. This allows everyone on the team to be open (listen to understand the perspective being shared and factor it into the decision-making process) and honest (everyone on the team can just “say it as I see it” without filtering, knowing that what he says will be heard; yet he’s still free to change his mind even as he is laying out his current perspective.) Open and honest teams generate significant conflict; however, it is healthy conflict around ideas and is not characterized by personal attacks, politicking, or ego-driven defensiveness. Rather, it is conflict deeply invested in discovering solutions that are for the “greater good” of the organization.

To continue on Lencioni’s model, only once a team has had these open honest conversations can they truly commit to the decisions made and hold each other accountable. When accountability is low in an organization, you can usually count on a culture where people have not freely put their perspectives on the table for debate and consideration. You will also see results that consistently miss expectations. Even when a low-trust organization has good results (which they do on occasion, as there are some smart people on the team!) they will find that everyone has to work far too hard for the results he is achieving. As Covey says, “When trust is low, everything takes longer and costs more.”

In summary, it’s well worth spending time nurturing the trust level of your team. High trust cultures will outperform low trust cultures consistently. And high trust cultures attract and keep great talent.