State Civil Service webinar offers practical tools for building trust on teams

State Civil Service hosts used a live Success Series webinar to walk employees and supervisors through assessment questions, practical exercises and everyday habits aimed at "building better trust to create better teams." Kimberly, a host with State Civil Service, opened the hour by framing trust as the foundation for effective teamwork and invited participants to a series of short polls and chat exercises.

Tara Gallup, Success Series producer, introduced an online assessment from the agency's Leadership Academy and asked participants to rate dependability, consistency and confidence. "It is called SCS CPTV, Becoming Trustworthy," Gallup said when naming the web-based course that the session drew from. Hosts shared poll results in real time; most participants rated themselves a 4 on confidence and dependability, and Gallup said the responses underscored self-awareness as a starting point for building trust.

The webinar then contrasted "trust builders" and "trust breakers." Nathan Born, a co-host, defined trust builders as actions such as honesty and following through on commitments and described trust breakers as behaviors that create doubt, like repeatedly missing deadlines. Participants and hosts listed common breakers (lateness, not following through, oversharing outside agreed boundaries) and practical builders (consistency, clear communication, giving credit and showing vulnerability).

Born also proposed a simple acronym to make the practices easy to remember: "think of GRACE," he said, explaining the elements as greet, reliability, attentiveness, communication and empathy. Speakers emphasized small, day-to-day habits'calling people by name, following up on promises and checking in when coworkers seem overwhelmed'as high-impact ways to strengthen coworkers' willingness to rely on one another.

Hosts walked through concrete trust tools: be reliable and accountable (and communicate when you cannot deliver), be approachable and emotionally intelligent, support colleagues publicly and privately, and handle difficult conversations with integrity and a problem-solving focus. Kimberly described using role-play and even a desk mirror to practice approachable facial expressions and urged managers and peers to set team norms such as the "trust tree" (an agreed signal for confidentiality before someone shares a vulnerable detail).

The presenters closed with reflections on repair: rebuilding trust takes time and mutual effort. "Assume positive intent," Kimberly told participants, citing a team practice that helps defuse misunderstanding. The session ended with a mindful-minute takeaway and logistical information: the hosts invited attendees to register for the next Success Series episode on psychological safety (June 10) and to find resources and past episodes at civilservice.louisiana.gov under Learning, Performance and Culture.

The webinar delivered actionable, low-cost practices for supervisors and teammates; it emphasized that habits of consistency, clear communication and empathy are as important as formal training in sustaining trust across state civil service teams.