Are you confident enough in your team members’ judgement that you could trust them beyond their current roles? Most leaders and managers – if they were honest – would admit they don’t trust their team members that much.

Instead of operating from a lack of trust, ask yourself: What would you need to do to get to where you could trust them this much?

As their leader, you have the benefit of greater experience, which gives you deeper insight, and that in turn leads to wisdom. Help your team members acquire that same wisdom, and then you’ll be able to trust their judgement.

Metaphorically, you can do this in three ways:

1. Break down the walls: Help them understand how their role fits with the rest of the team, organisation, and the outside world.

2. Raise the roof: Expose them to higher roles, so they can see the bigger picture beyond their regular work.

3. Open the door: Give them the chance to speak up and be heard, inside and outside the organisation.

The first – and easiest – step to building judgement is to let people step outside their own little work bubble and see what’s going on around them. You can show them what’s happening elsewhere in the organisation and also what’s happening outside it.

As a leader, you can see how each person’s work fits into the overall project, but it’s not so easy for the people doing the work itself. Give them the chance to understand what other people in the organisation do, especially those directly connected to them. You can do this through informal job-swapping, letting them shadow somebody else for a day, or inviting co-workers to give a short presentation about their job.

Bring your team members closer to customers, even just to observe them.

This is valuable even for people in a support role – such as finance, administration or human resources – so they can see how their work contributes to the value your organisation offers.

This helps people understand how their work is meaningful and lets smart people suggest improvements.

If you can’t expose them to real customers, find other ways to demonstrate that their work has meaning, either to others in the organisation or to external stakeholders. People are motivated by knowing how their work plays a role in delivering an important service or creating a valuable product.

The organisational hierarchy can be useful if you use it to your advantage. Avoid the hierarchy if it causes friction (that’s called bureaucracy), but use it if it facilitates your goals.

For example, if the CEO has publicly stated her commitment to collaboration, you can quote her when asking your peers about job swapping, creating a mastermind group, or any other initiative you want to implement.

Your organisation might be the biggest, smallest, oldest, youngest, fastest, brightest, or better in some other way. It might pride itself on its remuneration, working conditions, management structure, social conscience, mentoring programs, paid parental leave, or something similar.

Even if your team members aren’t working in areas directly related to these features, they can still take pride in being part of an organisation that supports them.

Sometimes the best way to encourage cooperation is to remove resources rather than adding them. For example, a lunch room that’s shared with other teams might spark more interesting conversations than a private lunch room for your team.

Have you ever had a situation where a competent team member did something that seemed reasonable to them, but had consequences they didn’t anticipate? For example:

- The customer service person who offends a customer on Twitter
- The graphic designer who uses a photograph without the copyright holder’s permission, in order to meet a deadline
- The junior team member who turns up ten minutes late to a pitch meeting for a key client

These might seem trivial to the people involved, but they could have far-reaching consequences. You might have criticised them at the time, but perhaps they just didn’t understand the impact of their actions. As a leader, you can’t expect your team members to understand the consequences unless you give them access to things “above their pay scale”. You want them to understand a bigger picture, not only what they do in their little world. Otherwise, it's unreasonable to ask them to make wise decisions.

Building wisdom and good judgement doesn’t happen overnight. When you expose team members to new things, start by giving them a lot of support. This can be in the form of training (formal courses or on-the-job support), guidance, coaching or mentoring to help them learn how best to respond in different situations.

Use your judgement in taking people through a process that gradually gives them greater responsibility and freedom.

Most people learn good judgement through experience and feedback. They do something and get the feedback. Then they do it again, slightly differently, and get more feedback. And they do it again. And again. And again.

Fast-track this process by showing them the big picture early. Give them the chance to experience thinking at the next level, and it helps them develop their judgement.

When you’re going through tough times, it’s tempting to fight it out at management level and shield your team members from it. But that’s exactly the time when they could learn the most by knowing what’s happening. Even if they can’t contribute, they can watch and learn. And sometimes they can contribute, and that’s an unexpected bonus.

It’s difficult for people to understand an abstract concept like “Put the customer first”, but easy to remember a story that demonstrates the concept in action.

Collect stories, particularly those showing people exercising good judgement. They don’t have to be your personal stories, and are often better if they aren’t. If they involve people your team members know, they are more powerful. And if they involve team members themselves, they are even more powerful.

On a long project, you are motivated by the milestones and end date because you can see how they contribute to the overall project, but they aren’t. It doesn’t matter how much you talk about the rewards and sense of achievement (or, conversely, penalties and sense of failure), it just doesn’t matter to them – unless you bring the future closer.

- Involve them more in the planning process, rather than just assigning them tasks based on your plan.
- Explain how their tasks contribute to the overall project, and how that in turns contributes to the organisation’s goals.
- Include intermediate goals (you might call them milestones, lead measures, or KPIs) that involve the team goals and organisation goals, not just their own.
- Be transparent about sharing information, even if it’s not directly related to their current role.
- Recognise and celebrate milestones along the way.

It’s one thing to offer input into decisions; it’s another thing altogether to make those decisions. Give your team members the power to make more decisions, including decisions you normally make yourself.

If they aren’t ready to make these decisions, first let them make more decisions at their own level, and then bring them closer to higher decisions. For example, invite them to a management meeting as an observer so they can see the decision-making process in action.

When you let them make decisions (at any level), accept those decisions, even if you think you would have made a different decision. Unless they have overlooked something important, go with their decision, not yours.

So far we’ve looked at ways for you to show your team members a bigger picture than just their role. They know what’s happening in the rest of the team, the rest of the organisation, and even the outside world.

But it’s not enough to just sit on the sidelines and watch. Real judgement comes from experience, not just from observation.

If you really want them to learn, give them the chance to do things, even with the risk they will make mistakes. You’ve minimised the risk by giving them the chance to observe and learn, so now give them the chance to shine.

You’ve given your team members the chance to see how other parts of the organisation work, so now ask for their comments, suggestions, and advice. They are looking at things with new eyes and a fresh outlook, so they might be able to suggest improvements and enhancements.

Don’t just ask for their advice; be willing to act on it. In fact, adopt the attitude that you will act on their advice unless there are really strong reasons against it. Even if it means extra time, effort, or money, do it anyway. After all, you’re not always the best judge of the outcome, and you might be surprised at the results.

More importantly, though, acting on the advice shows them you value and appreciate it, which will encourage them to speak up more often in the future.

Introduce them selectively to people in your wider network – both offline and online. Look for people who can help them (for example, as mentors, advisers, colleagues in other organisations, or clients) and introduce them to each other.

Your team members also have valuable skills, experience and their own network; and these could help other people you know. So look for opportunities to connect them with people they can help, not only those who can help them.

Give them a chance to not just observe customers, but interact with them – in the retail shop, at the incoming call centre, on social media, at the reception desk, or wherever else your organisation interacts with customers.

You can’t do this with every customer-facing role, but just giving people exposure to customers in some way is better than none at all.

Organisations like Zappos and JetBlue are famous for giving their staff flexibility in dealing with customers. Even if your organisation doesn’t have this culture, don’t hold onto the reins too tightly. Give them a bit of freedom and you might be surprised at the results .

Invite them to contribute to your organisation’s internal newsletter, the external quarterly magazine, the internal blog on the intranet, or the external blog on your Web site.

Some of these publications might be tightly controlled, so you might have to work hard to persuade their managers to accept other contributions, let alone contributions from “junior” people. But it’s worth the effort, not only for your team members, but also for the organisation as a whole.

Don’t limit your thinking to the written word. They could present (or co-present) at meetings, deliver training courses, publish videos, and present webinars.

Some team members will be so keen about speaking up that they want to become an authority in their own right. Give them a platform of their own, beyond just being a contributor to a shared platform.

This might take even more effort to get approved, but again it’s worth it. Having a reputation as an organisation that fosters thought leadership is good for everybody.

Some team members will already have a strong online presence. If that is aligned with your team or organisation, help them develop it further.

Look for ways to support them – for example, giving them time to work on this passion, finding conferences and events for them to attend (or present at), showcasing some of their work in your internal publications, and so on.

Be careful not to “take over” their platform. You can invite them to contribute to internal publications, but don’t force them to bring everything under the organisation’s umbrella. If they are passionate enough to have built a following, they are passionate about it owning it. Support them in continuing to build their expertise and authority, and you will benefit anyway.

They might have a mentor, but invite them to be a mentor as well. This doesn’t have to be mentoring somebody junior, as traditional mentoring would suggest. It could also be mentoring somebody more senior in the organisation, in an area where your team member has expertise – for example, social media, consumer behaviour, technology trends, or consumer electronics.

Your team members operate in completely different social circles than you, so you might think their networks are not valuable to you. However, the exact opposite might be true. This difference might be useful because they connect you to completely new people.

Ask your team members to reach out to their networks when you need help with recruitment, product recommendations, product testing, and so on.

Don’t assume that only you can help your team members. Find the natural connectors in your team (perhaps they are the ones who are always on Facebook!) and ask for their suggestions. They might host social events with other teams, start a monthly mastermind group, or tap into their social media network to find a guest speaker for a team meeting.

If they express an interest – or even passion – in something non-work-related but which you can support, do your best to offer resources to support them.

Even if you don’t have the authority to support this financially, you can still support them by giving them time and other resources within your control.

Whatever method you choose, consider it an investment rather than a cost. Your team members will be more motivated to do their regular work, and might also find creative ways to link their regular work with their community work.

Gihan Perera is a futurist, and an expert in helping leaders understand how the Internet has changed their world. He has been using the Internet since 1987, long before many people knew it existed. For the last 15 years, he has been a speaker, trainer, webinar presenter and mentor, helping thought leaders and business leaders with their e-marketing, e-learning and business strategies.

He is the author of “There’s an I in Team”, “Fast, Flat and Free: How the Internet Has Changed Your Business”, “Out of Office: Using the Internet for Greater Freedom in Your Work Life”, and eight other books.

Find out more at GihanPerera.com.