Building Team Trust
Watch/Listen here or on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts“I believe as the leadership team goes, so goes the rest of the company. So if you don't have that consistent and significant sustainable growth, you've got some work to do.” — Mike Goldman
Definition of Trust:
Not just about trusting someone to complete tasks but about vulnerability-based trust.
Trusting someone to be open, honest, and to give/receive feedback without fear of judgment.
Consequences of a Lack of Trust
Team Dynamics:
Ideas are not shared due to fear of conflict or rejection.
Lack of conflict leads to:
Missed opportunities for innovation.
Absence of true commitment from team members.
Creates the "meeting after the meeting" phenomenon where issues are discussed outside the main discussion.
Organizational Impact:
Team members lack accountability and commitment.
Trust issues cascade down through the organization, affecting productivity and morale.
Identifying Trust Issues in Teams
Meetings are uneventful and focused on status updates instead of real discussions.
Lack of emotional or intellectual conflict.
Issues of trust seen in lower teams often originate at the leadership level.
Building Trust: Practical Steps
Start with Yourself:
Take personal responsibility for fostering trust.
Adopt an internal locus of control: focus on what you can control.
Assume positive intent in others.
Encourage Vulnerability:
Be the first to demonstrate vulnerability to create a trust-building "vulnerability loop."
Meeting Ground Rules for Trust
Courageous Honesty: Speak honestly, especially when it’s difficult.
No Shame, No Blame: Focus on improvement, not assigning blame.
Disagree and Commit: Support the team’s decision even if you initially disagreed.
Exercises to Foster Trust
Personal Lifeline Exercise :
Team members share personal highs and lows to foster connection.
Personal Histories Exercise:
Answer questions about personal challenges, accomplishments, fears, and fun facts.
Coaching Triad/Dyad:
Team members identify personal goals and coach each other.
Peer Accountability Exercise: Vulnerability and Peer Accountability Excercise Episode
Team members provide one piece of positive feedback and one area for improvement for each colleague.
The Foundation of a Great Team
Building trust is the cornerstone of a successful leadership team.
Without trust, there is no team.
Thanks for listening!
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[00:00:00] The biggest killer of a leadership team, and in fact, the biggest killer of any team is a lack of trust. And when I say trust, I don't really mean trust that someone is going to get some work done or trust that they're going to get it done at a quality level. It's partially that.
But I'm really talking about something Patrick Lencioni would call vulnerability based trust, trusting that you could be open and honest with someone and they could do the same for you, trusting that you could give and receive honest feedback.
Without fear of retribution, trust that you could say, I'm sorry, I screwed up. I need help. [00:01:00] And no one is going to use that against you. That's the kind of trust I'm talking about. So trust that you're going to get things done reliably as a, is a part of that. But. If there's that vulnerability based trust, but it's someone who's not effectively getting things done, you could typically work that through when vulnerability based trust is broken.
It is really hard. And I've seen situations where it's just seemingly impossible to get it back.
Now let's talk about before I talk about some things that may help in some solutions. Let's talk about why it's so important. Some of the things that happen as a result of a lack of vulnerability based trust.[00:02:00]
And one thing is when you're around the table with your team, all ideas are not heard. If there's a lack of trust around that table, vulnerability based trust.
There are people that are not going to speak their mind for fear of causing a disagreement with someone, or for fear of rubbing someone the wrong way, or for fear of how they're going to react.
So there are people around the room that are just going to keep their mouth shut. And if all ideas are not heard in a productive way, that's hurting the team. Because everybody around that table. Deserves to be heard. And if there's anybody around your leadership table that you don't think deserves to be hurt and heard, then what the hell are they doing around your leadership table now [00:03:00] related to that, if there is a lack of trust, conflict doesn't happen and, and conflict.
While some may look at conflict as a negative thing, conflict is absolutely essential. To the high functioning of, of any team, especially the leadership team. As long as that conflict is about ideas and not about personalities. What I mean by that is if there's conflict, you know, you never listen. You always interrupt.
That
could be very hurtful. But conflict around, Hey, let's, let's talk about my idea versus your idea. And last let's hash it out. That's a beautiful thing. That's a critical thing. And if you don't have trust around that table and speaking, people aren't speaking up. If you [00:04:00] don't have trust around that table and people fear conflict.
Then you're missing important ideas on the team. And not only are you missing important ideas and new strategies, new ways of doing things, but if you don't have that conflict and if people are sitting quiet and not engaging, real commitment across the team doesn't happen. Because if I'm keeping my ideas on the inside and not letting them out.
If I disagree with you, but I fear entering that danger zone because of a lack of trust. Well, you might think you have my support and my commitment, but there's a whole bunch I haven't voiced. And that's where you see things like the meeting after the meeting. Do you believe what he said? You really think that's going to work?
When there's a lack of trust, you get that [00:05:00] meeting after the meeting versus dealing with issues head on in that discussion. So there's a lack of commitment, which means, and this sounds like it's coming right out of Lencioni's five dysfunctions of a team. And if you haven't read it, go read it. Great book, short read.
You'll get through it on a flight. If you don't have that commitment, then team members don't hold themselves accountable. If I haven't truly committed to this idea, cause I think it's a crappy idea. I just haven't shared it with you. Well, I'm not really committing to it. And my team is probably not really going to commit to it.
Cause I'm going to go at it half heartedly. I'm going to go back to my team and say things like, well, they decided to do this. Let's, let's make the best of it. That's not exactly a rah rah rallying cry to get it done. And not only [00:06:00] am I not really going to hold myself accountable to an idea I think was crappy anyway, but I'm not going to hold the other leaders around the table.
Accountable for something I don't truly believe in. Now that lack of trust and conflict and commitment and accountability cascades right down through the organization. So if you are a CEO or member of a senior leadership team, man, you could bet everything you have that if you've got those issues on your senior leadership team, that stuff is cascading down.
Very often when I've seen sales teams that don't get along with the operations team and they're fighting and they don't trust each other, it's because that's what's happening at a senior leadership team level. So it cascades down, team members [00:07:00] leave, growth stagnates because of the lack of great new ideas, because of the lack of, of conflict and commitment and accountability.
It's very frustrating. Frankly, it's very lonely, especially if you are a CEO and you don't have that trust in several members of your leadership team, man, that's a lonely place. You feel like nobody cares, but you know, you can't count on anybody, but you, and it's no fun. If you're on a team with lack of trust, I would bet everything I have that you don't wake up in the morning.
Just raring to go. Can't wait to get to work today.
So there's a real [00:08:00] ROI quantitative and qualitative in building that trust, that connection, that vulnerability across your team.
So I want to talk a little bit about how, you know, there's a lack of trust, you know, you know, there's a lack of trust. If, if your meetings are uneventful. If, discussions about new ideas are really quick, everybody gets nods their head and there's no pushback.
There's no real discussion. There's no conflict, even emotional conflict. Sometimes there's nothing wrong with being emotional. People are like, well, let's stick to the facts and not be emotional. That's BS. It's okay to be emotional again about ideas, not about personalities. That's dangerous space, but emotional about ideas.
So meetings are quick, [00:09:00] uneventful, boring. You're talking about things like status versus real issues and things you've got to resolve. Discussions about new ideas and strategies don't seem to happen. I said before, there's the meeting after the meeting.
And again, you see problems. Of trust in areas lower than the leadership team. And if you see that, if you've got a lack of trust between the finance team and the operations team or the sales team and the service team, does it necessarily mean there's a lack of trust at a senior leadership team level? No, not a hundred percent, but man, it's a good place to look because that stuff cascades down.
So let's talk about some things we can do. To increase [00:10:00] trust. And I've seen this to be such an important obstacle to overcome. And I'm never exactly sure when these things are going to be scheduled and it doesn't much matter because you could be listening to this. Two years after it's scheduled, but it's such an issue that actually have a guest episode, with a, you know, just a phenomenally intelligent, PhD talking about connection on a team.
And it's either, I think it's going to happen right before this one or right after this one. But let me give you my view on that. You'll, you'll get his view and some of my views as well. But let me talk about some of the things that I've seen. Leaders and leadership teams do that increase that vulnerability base trust.
And this is in no real order, except maybe this first one, maybe this first one has to go first after that have at it.
But the first thing that's really important, and [00:11:00] I don't care if you are the CEO, the COO, a VP of sales, or. Or an accounts payable clerk listening to this. It doesn't matter if you want to build greater trust on your team, it starts with you.
It does not start with, I wish people around me would trust me more or trust each other more. Or I wish the CEO would trust me more. It starts with you, it starts with what I call, what's called an internal locus of control. An internal locus of control says I make things happen, as opposed to an external locus of control that says the world happens to me.
Well, let's take that internal locus of control, focus on what we can control. And there are a few things you can control. Number one is assume positive intent. In [00:12:00] the people around you know, I have a whole Ted talk on this called the antidote to anger. Go listen to it. A emotional story about me and my son and what I learned from frankly being a crappy dad growing up.
But the idea of assuming positive intent says assume the people around you or that one person you're talking to is just trying to do the best they can. With the resources they have. Doesn't mean you agree with them. Doesn't mean they're doing the right thing, but it's this way of believing it's this attitude that this person is just trying to do the best they can with the resources they have.
Now, maybe, maybe they don't have the resources you have.
Maybe, you know, something they don't know, or maybe they know [00:13:00] something you don't know, but I very rarely, I'm not sure I've ever known one, anyone to wake up in the morning and say, Hmm, what could I screw up today? I don't see anyone like that. Maybe they exist. And even if they do. Assuming negative intent drives a lack of trust.
It drives frustration. It hurts relationships. There's no value in assuming negative intent, but if we assume positive intent, we get curious if they're just trying to do the best they can with the resources they have. And I think what they're talking about doing makes no sense. I disagree with it. It causes me to get curious.
And ask questions versus getting angry and lashing out.
It drives nicely into this really interesting book. I read a couple of years ago called [00:14:00] Conversational Capacity. And, I should probably remember the author's name and I don't, but look up conversational capacity, but the essence of what he talks about is that when you are engaged in conflict, and again, this is something you can control when you're engaged in conflict, there are two extreme ways of, of being or two extreme, yeah, ways, ways of being one extreme is what the author calls minimizing.
Minimizing is when you say things like, you probably know better than I do, but you know, you're the expert, but this probably isn't important, but you're telling people not to listen to you. That's minimizing. The extreme version of minimizing is you keep your mouth shut and you say, I don't want to sound stupid or this probably isn't important or they're [00:15:00] probably smarter than I am.
So I'm not going to say anything. That's minimizing. Now the other extreme, and I see this more often in leaders, especially strong leaders, the other extreme is winning. You enter into a debate, into conflict with the purpose of winning the argument. Now that doesn't sound so bad, you know, theory of evolution.
Everybody's trying to win. The best idea is going to win out, but it's not always true. As a leader, especially if you are the leader of the team, when your goal is to win, you shut other people out. I worked with a leader who was brilliant, but when I first, and it still is brilliant, when I first started working with him, if someone disagreed with him, he treated them like a hostile witness on the [00:16:00] stand.
So you really believe that by doing that, we're going to achieve our goal. When has that ever worked in the past? Tell me one time like, Oh my God. A bunch of real tough, no way to win closed, closed ended questions. And when he did that, of course he shut that person down, but he didn't just shut the person down.
He shut everybody in that room down. I certainly didn't feel comfortable challenging him after he just beat the crap out of that poor. Member of the, of the leadership team. So winning is not healthy. Minimizing is not healthy. So what is healthy? We need to be in the middle and in the middle is you are.
Making a case, you are debating, you are arguing, call it what you want, but you are doing it for the purpose of gathering information to make the best decision you can in the moment. [00:17:00] So instead of berating someone for disagreeing with you, again, you get curious, or instead of just stating your opinion so strongly that people are afraid to argue with you, you're Saying something like, man, I, I got to tell you, I feel really strongly that this is the answer, but there's enough smart people around this room that disagree with me.
So I'm certain I'm missing something. Help me understand what I'm missing and do that out of pure curiosity. Don't do that with an attitude of, yeah, well, I don't think, you know what, help me understand what I'm missing here. Like with an attitude, which shuts people down. True curiosity. What are you missing?
Gather information to make the best decision. It doesn't mean you can't argue the case, but entertain the possibility that you might be wrong. And there might be someone else around the table who has another important perspective or know something you don't know. [00:18:00] So have that conversational capacity.
The other thing that kind of starts with you is be vulnerable first. If you want someone to trust you, trust them first. If you want someone to be vulnerable with you and share, if they made a mistake, if they need help, if you know, if they want to apologize, if you want someone to be vulnerable with you, be vulnerable with them first.
First, there's a great book called the culture code by Dan Coyle, and he talks about something called the vulnerability loop and in the vulnerability loop. You're vulnerable with someone. They then see your vulnerability and they're vulnerable, vulnerable. That's a tough word to say 15 times.
They're vulnerable right back. [00:19:00] So you tell them, Hey, I'm really sorry. I screwed this up. And they say, I get it. I appreciate you telling me that. I could remember, you know, a couple of years ago before I learned A, B, and C, I screwed that up all the time. And in fact, I still screw it up. You're vulnerable with them.
They're vulnerable right back and they may share. And, and by the way, while I don't have a problem with that, here's something, I have a problem with. When you see their vulnerability, you then get more vulnerable with them and you start this virtuous cycle of more and more trust, more and more vulnerability.
So it all starts with you. Now, here's some other things you can do or put in place with your team. But again, it's gotta start with you.
Have ground rules for your meetings. So I have three ground rules in all of my meetings with clients [00:20:00] that set things off. In a way that allows people to have greater trust and greater vulnerability.
And the first thing that I asked my teams to do in, in ground rules is to have brutal honesty with each other. Now, more recently, I've been using the term courageous honesty, because people, people don't want to be brutal with each other. And that's probably a good change. It doesn't have to be brutal, but it's got to be courageous honesty.
And what that means. Be honest, especially when it's difficult. If you're finding it difficult to say something because you don't know how the team will react, or you don't know how another person will react, that's probably the most important thing to say. If you're finding it difficult to speak up and be honest about something, cause you're worried about how it's going to make you look, if people disagree, it's probably the most important thing to say you're around that table.
For a [00:21:00] reason and if you're keeping your mouth shut you are hurting not only yourself, but you're hurting the team So number one courageous honesty number two is no shame. No blame when you're being courageously honest It's never to hurt anyone around the table It's never to gang up on anybody and make them feel bad now. We might be courageously honest about calling someone out for behavior that's hurting the team or calling someone out for not being honest honoring a commitment they made to you or to the team, but we're always doing it from the standpoint of making them or the team better moving forward.
We're not doing it to hurt anyone. So the first ground rule is courageous honesty. Second is no shame, no blame. And the third is disagree and commit. Disagree and commit says if everyone gets a chance to be heard, but whoever is accountable for a decision makes a decision [00:22:00] that maybe you didn't agree with.
As long as you were heard, you need to commit to that decision as if it was your own. And that doesn't mean going back to your team and saying, sorry, everybody, they decided to go with option B. Let's make the best of it. That's not commitment. Commitment is going back to the team and saying, Hey, we had a great discussion.
We decided option B. Let's figure out how we're going to make that work. That's disagree and commit. So meeting ground rules and add your own. But having meeting ground rules are important to create kind of a foundation of, of openness and honesty. A few exercises that I've done that help.
Number one is.
Exercises that focus on learning more about the people around you. [00:23:00] And there are two exercises I do for that that are similar. there's one called the personal lifeline and one called personal histories for personal lifeline. That is a really cool exercise, really interesting exercise that always allows people to learn things about each other.
Even if they've worked together for 15 years. They absolutely learn new things. Personal lifeline is where you, where you, you go through your life from birth until today. Not birth until death, unless you plan on leaving us today, but from birth until today, what are the eight or 10 highlights and lowlights of your life?
What are those peaks and valleys, personal and professional? You know, there may be peaks around, you know, getting into the college you want, but then, you know, grandma passing away and how that was tough and then, you know, getting married and having a [00:24:00] child, but then maybe, you know, you've got issues with your child and getting a new job, getting fired from a job, going through a difficult divorce, whatever it is, sharing those amazing moments from your life, those great moments from your life and those moments that.
Make you want to cry. And again, the more vulnerable you are in sharing that, the more vulnerable the people are going to be around you. So what I ask, I give people about 10 minutes to plot the highlights and low lights of their lives and where, where did they make, what was the most important decision they ever made?
What was the best decision they ever made? What was the worst decision they ever made? They plot all that out and then go around the room and share with each other. Usually there's some crying involved, but, but. Always you're learning more about each other. Very similar exercise is something called the personal histories exercise, where instead of going through your life from [00:25:00] start to today, it's more of a set of questions and pick your own questions.
But I've used questions like, Hey, what was your family like growing up? What was your biggest challenge in your life? Or what was your biggest challenge growing up? What was your greatest accomplishment? What's your biggest fear? Pick five or six or eight questions and some of them could be just fun stuff like what's your favorite movie?
What's your favorite hobby? What was your most embarrassing moment? But coming up with five, six, eight, ten questions and then going around the room and sharing again I don't care if you work with someone for 20 years, you're gonna learn something new. Next exercise is something I call the Coaching triad.
And if you can't get into groups of three, make them coaching dyads. But a coaching triad is one where I ask each member of the team to identify one [00:26:00] thing that they want to improve in themselves. Not about the company, not about their, their teams. It's about themselves. It's being vulnerable. Here's something I know I want to do better in, in business or in my life.
Could be, I want to be a better coach for my people. It could be, I want to listen more. It could be, I want to be there more for my kids or, or my spouse.
There's something you want to learn more that would help you do your job. Whatever it is, everyone identifies something they need to work on and improve over the next 90 days. I then break them into dyads or triads and everyone gets a chance. To state what they want to improve, why, and then the the other person or persons, if it's a triad coach them through.
[00:27:00] Ways to improve the chances of them actually accomplishing what they want to accomplish. I actually use this for two reasons. One is it, well, three reasons. One is everybody gets some help from other people in the room. The second one is you build vulnerability based trust because everybody's sharing something they want to get better at versus always thinking they've got to put that, you know, powerful face on.
And the third thing is they learn how to be better coaches because one of the things I. coach them on before is to really try hard not to give advice. Just ask questions. And this great book on the right questions to ask called the coaching habit by Michael Bungay Stanier. So I find that to be an incredibly powerful.
Exercise. I've also done that and come in combination with strength finder 2.0 where there's something called the, the, VIA character [00:28:00] strengths survey on, authentic happiness. com. There are two different ways to identify what are your top three or top five natural strengths as a person. And instead of talking about something that I want to improve and getting help, it may be, how do I better leverage?
My top strength. So you could do that in combination with a strengths exercise. And then the last idea I have for you, and it's something I've mentioned on other podcasts because it is by far my favorite exercise I do with leadership teams. it scares the crap out of them when I first announced it, but I've never had it not work well.
And it's something I call the peer accountability exercise. And if you want the, the, the real details of that, I have a whole podcast that I think is called the peer accountability exercise. So listen to that. But at a high level, what it's about is going around the room and there's a very specific way to [00:29:00] facilitate this to add the most value.
So I really do encourage you to go listen to the peer accountability exercise podcast before you implement this. But the general idea is everyone on the team write something down for everybody else on the team. So if you're, if you're on a team with six other people, you're going to write six names down.
And for each of those six people, you're going to identify one thing that they, that you want to thank them for that you hope they keep doing something they do really well. That helps the team. Write that down. And then you write down something they do that you want them to change or work on or stop doing that hurts the team.
Everyone writes that down and then one by one you go around the room and share that and the only response when you hear feedback is to say thank you. Not, I agree, not, I disagree. You're not pushing back. [00:30:00] You're thanking people for having the courage, honesty, passion, caring about you and the team to give you that feedback.
Now you could also ask for clarification if you truly don't understand it. But what I do is I start with the CEO and first everybody gives the CEO that positive feedback. Here's what I want to thank you for. I hope you keep doing, and then you go around again. Everybody gives the CEO the feedback of what they want.
Him or her to change or do differently or, or work on or stop doing. And then you move on to the next person and you do the same thing. And then everybody's take notes. You're taking notes on the feedback you get because at the end, each person shares what's one or two things that they're going to start working on immediately.
So again, if you want to do that exercise, following the steps is really important. Listen to the peer accountability, exercise podcast.
But anyway, I hope I've given you some idea of, of why building trust is important, how you know, if you don't [00:31:00] have that trust, some things you can do on your own to build that vulnerability based trust, and then some things you can do.
With your team. There are a ton more ideas, but those are some that I have found worked really well. And again, if you don't have trust on your team, you don't have a team. So I always say, if you want a great company, you need a great leadership team. I hope I was able to get you there or at least closer to be there today.
Talk to you next time.