Trust and Trust Building
“First I have to build trust for my team to collaborate, right?” Wrong.
I want to tackle the topic of trust. I wrote a blog post on trust about two years ago. It’s related to the relationship-building podcast I did as part of this series, but it’s also different.
There is a presumption among many folks in my field that you have to build trust before you have a great team. My experience suggests that is not the case, that trust is not a necessary precursor for effective teamwork. Why would I say this?
Certainly, trust is important in teams. The greatest teams have high levels of trust even where some team members don’t like each other. But, I’ve done untold numbers of trust-building exercises that had no lasting impact on team performance.
Trust is an outcome, not a source of collaboration
I have a couple of contrarian thoughts about trust in teams. First, my big lesson has been that trust is an outcome. Trust is the result of people engaged together in meaningful work, learning about each other, coming to see each other's strengths and qualities through what they do together. Trust is an outcome of collaboration rather than a necessary input.
I was wrestling with the idea of trust as I was working on my book, Lessons from Mars. I had the idea of calling my niece’s husband who I thought might know a thing or two about teams. He’s a US Marine. He’s no longer actively serving but he’s a Marine. I asked him about how Marines develop the esprit de corps they’re famous for, that sense that each of them is part of a larger whole and that they have each other’s backs. He asked me why I was asking. I told him I was writing a book about teams and team building. He stopped me. He said, “We don’t do any team building. We become a team by working together, by going through tough stuff together that’s related to our mission. That’s what forms the bonds.”
I reflected on the work I had done with teams and I had to agree with what he said. It’s working together that creates trust. There are some lovely things you can do to try to build trust. But it’s the work together in the trenches that really makes the difference.
The Trust Standoff
There’s another thing I want to talk about and that’s what I call the Trust Standoff. You have probably experienced a case where someone says, “You know, I just can’t trust that Carlos guy. He’s on the team; I know I am supposed to work with him. I just can’t trust him.” What that does is create a barrier, right? If you can’t trust Carlos but you’re not going to talk to him, how is anything between you ever going to get resolved?
Notice this: When you’re saying, “I can’t trust Carlos,” what you are saying is, “My feelings of mistrust are caused by Carlos.” You might have concerns about Carlos’s reliability or his capability. But remember, those feelings are your feelings. No one controls your feelings except you. What’s more those concerns can’t be allowed to stand in the way of your team getting its work done. What you need to do is step in and have that conversation with Carlos. If you stand back and wait for him to change – to somehow “earn your trust” - nothing is going to happen. That’s the Trust Standoff. “I’m not moving until he moves!” It’s unproductive. No, it’s counter-productive.
That’s what led me to this conclusion: The most important person to trust in a team is yourself. In other words, I have enough confidence in my ability to deal with the situation, to step forward to Carlos and tell him what’s not working. “We have important things to do together so let’s address this issue.”
Courage and Responsibility for the Quality of you relationships
There was a great book I read called Teamwork is an Individual Skill by Christopher Avery. I highly recommend it. In his book, Avery suggests that you act as if you are 100% responsible for the quality of your relationships. “As if,” is the operative phrase. Of course, you’re not, right? But, if you stand back and assume that the other person is responsible for your relationship, and they’re in the same place, nothing is going to happen. You are both waiting for the other person to move. Instead, if you both act as if you are 100% responsible what will that lead to? One of the two of you will think, “Something’s not working here, so there must be something I can do about it.” That is when things start to move, when we break through the barriers of mistrust and put an end to the Trust Standoff.
My message is this: It’s really about courage; you can trust yourself. Courage just means “heart.” We all have heart. You can do it, you can step in, you can break those trust standoffs by knowing that you are going to be okay. You might even learn something. On top of that, courage is contagious. When you demonstrate those small acts of courage, your teammates see that. They start thinking, “Wow, that’s good. I bet I could do that.” That’s what I mean when I say that courage is contagious. Working together courageously breeds trust. To me, that is what real trust building is all about.
There you have it. My contrarian view on trust and trust building. In my next blogpost, I’ll be wrapping up the series with a summary of all the key points I’ve covered since the beginning of the series.
