“Without trust we don’t truly collaborate or, at best, cooperate. It is trust that transforms a group of people into a team.”

- Steven Covey

In working with teams to help them operate more effectively, I have found that having a foundation of trust and safety among team members is key. When these two elements are in place, team members:

• commit to and accomplish goals

• keep each other accountable

• have open communication

• encourage difficult conversations

• operate interdependently

• are more productive

A client once told me she experienced “flow” when working with a highly effective team.

Without these, it’s not a team. Instead, it’s a group of individuals working independently, focused on their own goals vs. team goals with little communication and sharing of information. This way of working often creates tension, conflict, and dysfunction and breaks down trust and safety. Which type of team are you a part of?

What is Trust and Safety?

I like Patrick Lencioni’s definition of trust, which is: “the confidence among team members that their peers’ intentions are good, and that there is no reason to be protective or careful around the group. Teammates must get comfortable being vulnerable with one another.”  

Safety and trust go hand in hand and safety must be in place to instill trust. Safety is the “in-the-moment “experiences where team members feel safe and secure to be open and honest, contribute, challenge, learn, succeed, and even fail without judgment by the others.

Yes, But Does It Work?

“Teamwork is the secret that makes common people achieve uncommon results.” Ifeanyi Onuoha

Recently, I facilitated a trust building workshop for a relatively new leadership team. Our day began with a self-reflection, an opportunity for each person to think about and share their thoughts on their position, the team, and the overall company. During this exercise, the team experienced open communication, empathy, and vulnerability, which created safety and trust amongst each other.

With trust and safety in place, our next activity was a strengths segment where each member shared their top five strengths with the team. This allowed the team to get to know and understand each other’s individual strengths in context with the whole team and develop ways to leverage each member’s strengths to operate more effectively.  This was another pivotal moment for the team as they celebrated each other’s unique talents and grew more confident in their ability as a team to overcome obstacles and achieve goals.

The final exercise was forming the team’s working agreements, a set of guidelines on how the team agrees to work, support and interact with each other to achieve their goals. Each member was asked to think about what standards he or she needs in place to feel safe to engage, collaborate, support, debate, and work productively. Together, the team came up with and agreed upon eight norms and the rich discussion fostered a deeper level of trust, safety, respect and understanding of how to become more effective as a team.

As we adjourned our meeting I was struck by how different this leadership team was with each other now than when our day had begun. I could sense the apprehension earlier in the day and now saw a new understanding among them. It was obvious to me that their interactions going forward would be much more effective, productive and meaningful.

Could your team benefit from a similar trust and safety building experience? Let’s talk!