Building an effective team
Cultivating trust within a team is a complex and ongoing task that requires expending efforts over an extended period. However, the resulting quality becomes the cornerstone of team effectiveness and synergy.
Based on many years of experience interacting with various teams, I have developed a framework for systematic and productive development of trust. Using this toolkit, my teams and I have been able to not only choose optimal mechanisms for strengthening trust but also ensure its sustainable development. This approach has become the key to creating team relationships that are based on solid principles of mutual understanding and trust.
Before delving into details of each of the five key stages of the framework (Fig. 1), it is important to realize that each stage represents a separate milestone on the path to creating trusting relationships within a team. These stages are interconnected and interdependent, and even though they may not follow a strict sequence, they do offer a structured approach to trust development.
Awareness and diagnosis
The first stage is nothing less than a deep understanding and awareness of the current level of trust in the team. Here, the key is diagnostic assessment, which may include surveys, individual interviews, and a GoSee process. The aim of this stage is to obtain an honest and objective picture of the level of trust within the team and identify any “trouble spots.”
Definition
The next stage focuses on defining what exactly the concept of trust means for your team. This can vary from team to team and depends on corporate culture, type of tasks, and even individual preferences of team members. It’s important for all team members to have a common understanding as it will serve as a foundation for all subsequent actions.
Dynamics
At this stage, attention is focused on identifying factors that either contribute to or, conversely, hinder the development of trust. These can be structural elements (for example, leadership style or performance assessment system) or more subtle aspects, such as approaches to interactions among team members.
Actions
At this stage, the main emphasis is on planning and executing specific actions to improve the level of trust. This may include changing corporate policies, conducting training, improving communication, and a host of other methods. The key is for the actions to be meaningful and aimed at solving precisely the issues that were identified in earlier stages.
Recovery
This final stage is critically important as trust is not a static state, but a dynamic process. There is always the risk of losing trust due to various factors: failures, misunderstandings, changes within the team, and so on. Restoring trust requires the team to be capable of self-analysis, admitting mistakes, and course correction.
Each of these stages has its own tools, methodologies, and practices, which I will present in the following sections of this article. Their application will allow your team to build relationships based on trust and become stronger and more effective.
It should also be noted that this framework is not a strict guideline, but rather, a set of recommendations and methods that can be adapted to specific needs and parameters of your team. After all, every team is unique, and there is no one-size-fits-all recipe for building trust.
Let’s consider all the steps in the following parts.
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