Trust is central to human existence. Like all social animals, human beings have an instinctive need to cooperate and rely on each other to satisfy their most basic emotional, psychological, and material needs.
Without trust, we are not only less happy as individuals but also less productive in groups. Research has linked the virtues and benefits of trust to economic prosperity, societal stability, and even human survival. The powerful effect of trust is that it enables cooperative behavior without costly and cumbersome monitoring and contracting.
In short, trust is a form of social capital that enhances performance between individuals, within and among groups, and in larger collectives, like organizations, institutions and nations.
Yet, even though the decision to trust is so important, most of us can provide only rudimentary explanations of why we choose to trust certain people, groups, and institutions and not others. Trust, like love and happiness, is difficult for people to explain in clear, rational terms. We extend trust with only a vague sense of our reasons for trusting, and we unknowingly create an incentive and a market for untrustworthy opportunists who rely on a steady supply of naive trustors. In not understanding trust, we may also fail to grasp why someone might be wary of giving us his or her trust. Worst of all, we may sometimes act unintentionally in ways that erode others' trust in us.
I hope that you have been part of a group or team in which there was high trust. You knew others had your back, which relieved some of the stress. You didn't have to be the hero every day; someone would always step up and help the group succeed.
Organizations create working groups, task forces and teams to accomplish goals that require diverse talents and capabilities. Collaboration within groups allows for specialization, the division of labor, and coordination, but attempting to collaborate without trust can be a nightmare. All high-functioning teams, whether they compete on soccer fields or corporate C-suites, depend on some form of trust for their success. Members of high-trust teams share information easily, extend support to one another, take up difficult tasks required by the group, and waste less time worrying that other team members will let them down.
A great deal of the work in organizations takes place in groups, yet their small size ensures that group effectiveness is highly reliant on individual personalities and interpersonal relations. The process of building trust within a team can be uncomfortable for some members, yet it often yields surprising and unexpected benefits.
At a team-building retreat, I have had great success as an outside executive coach having each team member take a self-assessment and review their test results confidentially with me over the telephone before the retreat. Then I prepare a team culture report along with a team view (that includes a graphic of each team member's profile to share with each other) to be distributed at the retreat. This team reports allow each team member to understand how he or she differs from the other team members.
Since each team member now knows, through these individual and team reports, what they do best and what they enjoy doing least, they begin to understand how best to share the workload of the team among each member.
A common exercise in the team-building retreat is to ask each member of the team to express publicly what he or she "appreciates most" about each of the other team members. Once this supportive trust-building environment is created through the appreciation exercise during the team-building event and the strongest manager in the team feels that s/he could trust his or her teammates enough to confide in them, the others become more willing and able to express their vulnerability and request help.
Here are some tips on building trust within your teams:
Teams with long life spans, like top executive teams, typically need to share information and coordinate so that trust helps performance.
Because teams with long life spans have more experiences together, they are more likely to come into conflict; periodic retreats or meetings may be needed for intensive relationship development and repair (if needed).
When interdependence among members is high, trust is critical.
When members are intensely identified with the team, cohesion within the team may increase.
Virtual teams require a more deliberate trust-building process centered around communication practices and making careful use of the few occasions where members are physically together. Virtual teams require more structure and attention to communication and to building and maintaining relationships.
When there is a change in team membership, like a new team member joining or one leaving, it is important to recognize that it is time for another team-building session to rebalance the team dynamics.
Robert F. Hurley: The Decision to Trust: How Leaders Create High-Trust Organizations
Dennis S Reina: Rebuilding Trust in the Workplace: Seven Steps to Renew Confidence, Commitment, and Energy
Mike Figliuolo: One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership
David Horsager: The Trust Edge: How Top Leaders Gain Faster Results, Deeper Relationships, and a Stronger Bottom Line
Vanessa Hall: The Truth About Trust in Business: How to Enrich the Bottom Line, Improve Retention, and Build Valuable Relationships for Success
John Agno: Can't Get Enough Leadership: Book Notes & Coaching Tips