A Five-Minute Fix for Building Trust in Teams
Building Trust with your team is important, so is not wasting time.
In the high-octane world of commissioned sales, time quite literally is money. Yet, the teams that consistently outperform are rarely just an assembly of lone wolves. They're connected units built on trust, which is reinforced by leadership.
Enter the 5-minute check-in.
These brief, intentional conversations aren't about micromanaging or rehashing yesterday's numbers (we all get enough of that in formal meetings). They're about the human connection that turns colleagues into allies.
Stop watches ready? Go.
60 seconds on personal well-being
180 seconds on professional needs
60 seconds on immediate action
Ding! That's it.
"How's life treating you?" might seem trivial when quotas loom, but acknowledging that your teammate had a flooded basement, or their kid scored the winning goal creates connection faster than any team-building exercise involving trust falls (and we've all had enough of those).
The Science Behind The Check-In
Richard Barrett, founder of the Barrett Values Centre, explains this phenomenon brilliantly in his Leadership Trust Matrix. Barrett identifies four essential components that build lasting trust:
Character – Your integrity and authenticity
Competence – Your skills and ability to deliver results
Compassion – Your genuine care for others' well-being
Consistency – Your reliability over time
The 5-minute check-in brilliantly addresses all four dimensions. By performing these at a regimen (consistency), demonstrating expertise by offering solutions (competence), genuinely inquiring about personal matters (compassion), and being authentic in your interactions (character), you hit every quadrant of Barrett's matrix in under five minutes.
Key Takeaway: The beauty of the Leadership Trust Matrix lies in consistency. A five-minute investment, three times a week, compounds like interest. Before long, team members who might have hidden their true nature and full potential, becomes the colleague who shares more, defines and collapses on more opportunity. This is because you've built something more valuable than commission – mutual trust that spans Barrett's entire matrix.