What Does a Healthy Team Look Like?
A healthy team has:
- trusting relationships,
- transparency of needs and wants, and
- one common vision to achieve.
Trusting relationships don’t just automatically appear from thin air. They are built. When a team has trust, each individual has taken on responsibilities and holds them well.
Real World Problems
“I want ‘high trust’ to be part of my company culture. How do I make that happen AND recognize that people are human and make mistakes? I want to get the team working smoothly and still be compassionate. I don’t feel like that’s happening right now.”
Russ – IT Services Industry
“We have meetings and I think things are on a roll to some great action. As it turns out, communication is a problem. I want people to be totally on it – to own the plans, own the action items, own the outcome. It’s just not happening.” Jeff – Manufacturing Industry
Do You Have a Trust Problem on Your Team?
It’s surprising how little clarity there is in the day to day commitments we make at work. What does a great conversation about trust look like? It includes compassion and transparency, a look back at past commitments (met and not), and a look forward at what commitments look like.
Think about business as one commitment for action after another; it’s now incredibly important to be clear about what the commitment actually is… AND when it’s supposed to be done. There are so many places where making a commitment or asking for something can go wrong. If you and your team are aware of those traps (and the opportunities to build trust too!), the better you’ll get at cutting to the chase, make realistic commitments, and completing them – building great trust all the way.
How Trust Works
The more you make commitments (agreements or promises) and deliver what you said you would, the more people trust you. The more you make agreements and don’t deliver, the more people don’t trust you. Actually they will trust you. They will just trust you NOT do what you said!
Deep trust is built when you can ask and receive commitments about bigger and bigger things.
How commitments play out is what we call the atom of trust. Wouldn’t it be great to have your team UNDERSTAND how trust works then work together to build trust with one another, your customers, and your community? Wouldn’t it be great if you all knew what to do when trust is broken?!
Knowing this model will help take some of the charged emotion out of the conversations you have to have when trust is broken.
The Mechanics of Building Trust
There are two parties and at least four parts to an agreement in business. Setting clear shared expectations for WHAT the agreement is and when it gets done is a must if you ever expect to build trust. The four parts of an agreement include:
– what people are making the commitment
– what is to be delivered
– what is needed to deliver
– a date and time for delivery
What will you gain from doing work to build a trusting team?
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- You and your team will understand how trust works.
- You will build trust as an integral part of your business culture.
- You all will have worked with this trust model enough to untangle processes that are inhibiting trust and build new processes that help to gain trust.
- If you are great with your agreements, you will have an asset in your business that few business leaders can claim.
Register to attend an INTRO to Building High Performing Teams | Understanding How Trust Works.
There’s low hanging fruit here! With a little help from Miche, who’s been doing this kind of work for over 30 years, you can increase your profit margins, get more of your time back, and get your team to be rock stars. What are you waiting for? If your concerns are immediate, you email to schedule some time to set up a private session with Miche.