A free weekly newsletter to expand your perspective for personal and professional growth.

A Shortcut to Building Trust

Building trust in the workplace is often seen as a byproduct of getting to know your colleagues not only professionally, but also personally. Which would take years of collaboration, mutual understanding, and shared failures and successes. However, in fast-paced companies like Eon Dental, we learnt how to build trust faster. I’m sharing how we do that here.

Trust shouldn’t appear on its own. If you want to build trust, you need to be intentional about it. There are 2 important pillars to help you with that: capability and communication. By focusing intentionally on these areas, leaders; given their seniority, must trigger this change, but all employees must adopt it once aware about it. Once implemented, you’ll start seeing trust levels increasing which accelerates team performance..

Capability: Turning Potential Into Performance

Trust begins with capability—the proven ability to deliver: If the person across from you delivered what they said they would on the first time that said they would, and did it consistently over time, then eventually; you will naturally trust this person to successfully finish the job in the future.
However, this isn’t just about technical expertise; it’s also about persistence, focus, and an openness to learning.

• Persistence Sparks Capability
  Skill-building starts with showing up consistently. Whether you’re leading a project or contributing to a team, persistent effort lays the foundation for trust. People trust those who reliably deliver, even in the face of challenges.

• Focus Fuels Progress
  With so many distractions, maintaining focus can feel like swimming against the current. But the most trusted professionals are those who prioritize, say no to unnecessary noise, and concentrate on what truly matters. The lack of focus would eventually spread you thin across many tasks and projects, leading to poor performance..

• Feedback Accelerates Growth
  Structured and consistent feedback loops act as capability accelerators. By creating an environment where feedback flows in 4 directions (your boss, your employees, your peers), the team can refine their skills, address blind spots, and improve faster than they could alone.

Uncomfortable Action: Have an explicit conversation with your manager about this, start being intentional about it, speak about it in meetings, and remind each other about it. It’s going to feel very uncomfortable and awkward at the beginning, but in a few weeks’ time, it’ll start feeling normal and natural!

Communication: Aligning Minds and Goals

The yang of Capability is Communication. You could be geniuses working alongside each other, but without the right communication, you’ll be pulling in different directions without harmony, and you’ll end up slow and ineffective. Lots of times people got shocked by how a lower capability team beats another one. It’s not rocket science; it’s just good team work..

Explicit, clear, and intentional communication ensures alignment and builds understanding.

• Set the Rules
  Based on team members’ responsibilities, have explicit discussions about accountability expectations. Don’t assume communication styles are understood easily between team members; align on them explicitly (on 1-1s, in smaller groups, and also in bigger meetings).

• Accountability Drives Results
  Assigning clear ownership of tasks and decisions is a communication superpower. When everyone knows who’s accountable for what, ambiguity dissipates, and momentum builds.

• Be Intentional About Expectations
  Don’t end meetings before identifying next steps, assigning one person accountable per task, and setting an initial deadline per task. This keeps the team aligned and focused.

Pro Tip: Do not end meetings before:
1) Identifying next steps and actions as a group,
2) Assigning one person accountable per task/action,
3) Setting an initial deadline per task/action.
Following this will immediately boost your team’s effectiveness..

The Trust Shortcut: Combining Capability and Communication

When capability and communication work together, they create a self-reinforcing loop that accelerates trust-building. Capability grows faster with intentional communication, while strong communication channels enhance the perception of capability.

Together, these cycles build momentum and create an environment where trust grows faster than you’d expect.

Real-Life Example: Eon Dental

At Eon, we started becoming much more effective as a team as we spent years of working together, and learning about each other. We were very effective, but we became much more effective when we started building trust proactively, much more explicitly than implicitly.

This intentional approach resulted in a lot of team synergy and, as a result, trust.. Once we achieved that, we unlocked new momentum levels, and our team started appreciating work and working together even more..!

Final Thought

Do not wait for trust to build over time. Use these pillars to create an emotionally-safe environment where trust is built intentionally, not as a byproduct of years spent working together.

You don’t need to be the most senior leader on the team to lead with intention. As long as you’re aware of this, you need to start taking action. Trust doesn’t just happen, it’s built deliberately and consistently. By focusing on your capability and mastering your communication, you’ll create the conditions for trust to start and then grow, and inspire others to do the same!

This newsletter exists to challenge your perspective, nudge you out of your comfort zone, and inspire growth. Embrace that challenge, and you’ll find new clarity in your work and personal life.
Don’t expect results without effort. Read that again.

Seeking more knowledge? Click here
Got feedback? Click here

Disclaimer

Fadi Samawi
Founder, Perspective Pivot | COO, Eon Dental | Coach
LinkedIn | Instagram | X