Trust is a huge part of having a highly functional team. One of the greatest talks I've ever heard on Trust and the importance of trust on a team is from Andy Stanley.

In fact, listen to a recent leadership podcast that Andy recorded. Great insights on this podcast. Highly recommend that you and your entire team take time to listen to this podcast together, and then discuss it. Our team did recently, and was incredibly valuable.

Here are a few main points and thoughts after listening to Andy talk about Trust vs. Suspicion:

1. Being trustworthy doesn't mean you'll be flawless and not make mistakes. Give your team freedom to make mistakes and then being willing to own up to it.

2. A great statement in terms of trust: I'll do what I said I would do, and if not, I will tell you.

3. As leaders, if our team fears our response when they mess up, because they've seen our response and don't want to deal with that, we need to change our response. Our response as leaders is determined by my personal maturity and security.

4. Ultimately, we create a culture of trust by trusting, and trusting more, and trusting even more.

5. Three things to blame when something goes wrong- blame a person, blame human nature, or blame the system. But many times, when the system is at fault and to blame, we still want to blame a person.

6. The tendency when something bad happens, or one of your team members acts in an untrustworthy fashion, is to try and create a system or a policy that will keep it from happening ever again- managing towards the lowest common denominator. One person messing up causes the entire system to change. This is not the right thing to do. All you'll do is create a culture where everyone thinks you don't trust them, and perhaps end up running off your best people on the team who are incredibly trustworthy because rules and regulations have been set up for one person, and not for everyone.