It’s impossible to emphasize enough the value trust has in building a great team. It is literally the foundation of all good things that happen in teams.
High-trust teams outperform regular teams in 3 ways:
1.) Learn more. In a knowledge economy, becoming a learning organization is essential. High trust teams maximize cycles of learning because it’s safe to test assumptions, ask questions and even fail. In today’s marketplace, the better, faster and more thoroughly we learn, the more successful we are.
2.) Collaborate better. Low-trust teams are less than the sum of their parts: team members may have exceptional skills and talent, but as a team they don’t perform. A study published in the Journal of Knowledge Management found that trust was a key element in a team's ability to share knowledge. Team members who trust each other are far more likely to proactively communicate and collaborate.
3.) Retain energy. In low-trust organizations, your people are spending much of their energy managing their reputation. On high-trust teams, individuals channel energy into driving innovative solutions and working hard, rather than trying to save face or make themselves look good.
What is Trust?
Trust embodies two key components: psychological safety and trustworthiness.
Psychological Safety refers to someone’s perceptions of the interpersonal consequences of taking risks. If you haven’t already, read Charles Duhigg’s great article from the NY Times about Google’s Quest to Build the Perfect Team. It’s a great read. For years, Google thought that the best team meant assembling the best individual players. That proved untrue.
The single most important determinant of a team’s performance is the measure of psychological safety.
Trustworthiness is equally essential, especially for you as the team leader. It’s basically how much people feel they can believe and depend on you. Master coach Jo Ilfeld of Incite to Leadership reminded me recently of Charles H. Green’s Trust Quotient.
I love this algorithm because it demonstrates how trustworthy behaviors (being credible, reliable and generating intimacy) are mitigated by how self-serving you appear to be.
Beware - if your team perceives you as just looking out for your own interests, your credibility rings false and you will be less trusted.
3 Strategies to Build Trust
1.) Lead by example. In order to be seen as credible and reliable, you must walk your talk. Leaders not living up to what they preach is the biggest barrier to trust in organizations. Early in my career, I worked for an executive who talked a lot about experimentation and innovation. But without fail, when someone on her team brought forth a new idea or wanted to run a test, she put the brakes on and reverted to how we always did things.
2.) Be transparent. Share what you can and make sure everyone on your team feels like they have access to the same level of information at the same time. Your team will know you can’t share everything, but they will appreciate your candor.
3.) Be vulnerable. Vulnerability does not mean being passive or weak. It demonstrates to your team the courage to be yourself. It also makes it possible to be fallible. Making mistakes is a valuable way to learn, grow and improve. Sharing your willingness to be wrong is the quickest way to build psychological safety.
Final Tips
Don’t play favorites - I once had a client whose team was underperforming. We looked at many things, but one key element was that he was regularly having lunch with two members of his team and not the others. Make sure you spread your attention evenly and justly across your team. They notice.
Don’t gossip - It can feel good to bond with someone by bad-mouthing someone else. Although this might build a temporary bond with the person we are gossiping with, it comes at a cost to long-term trust. Keep things positive or refrain from gossip.
Challenge for the week
By far the biggest difficulty my clients face is the idea of being vulnerable. When we share our vulnerability, we allow ourselves to connect with others on a human level. Try it this week:
- Tell your team about a time you messed up. It doesn’t have to be big. Be sure to reflect on what you could have done better, the consequences of your error and what you learned.
- Email me to let me know how it went
Victoria Reichenberg - Team Accelerator - VLRConsulting.com - victoria@vlrconsulting.com