Members of great teams trust one another on a fundamental, emotional level, and they are comfortable being vulnerable with each other about their weakness, mistakes, fears, and behaviors. They get to where they can be open with one another, without filters.
What influences trust on a team?
ACTIVITY: Evidence of Trust
A: What are the team’s five high-priority characteristics or evidence of trust?
B: What two or three things you will change about your own behavior to demonstrate trustworthiness to team members?
ACTIVITY: Personal Histories
PURPOSE
To describe some of your personal experiences, become more comfortable being opening with one another, and reduce the fundamental attribution error through questions that will help you know and understand one another better.
Questions for discussion (choose 3 questions for discussion):
1. Where did you grow up?
2. Describe a time when you very frightened?
3. Other than your parents, who had the greatest impact on you? What did the person do? How did you feel about it?
4. What is a mistake you made professionally that you wish you had a do-over on? Personally?
5. How many kids were in your family?
6. What are you very proud of professionally? Personally?
7. What was your first job?
8. What was the most important challenge for us being a kid?
EXERCISE
1. Answering the questions, write a short narrative about your personal history.
2. Share your story with the team.
3. Thinking about and telling your personal history, what did you learn about yourself?
4. Thinking about and hearing about others’ personal histories, what did you learn?
5. How will you use what you learned about yourself and others to enhance your trustworthiness with team members?
ACTIVITY: My Owner’s Manual
Have you ever thought it might be easier to form and manage relationships if each person came with instructions? We get instructions for cars, toys, recipes, etc. so why not provide instructions for how to team with you?
Please prepare a brief guide that will help colleagues and other members of your team understand your personality and style so they can apply this knowledge to enhance their relationships with you.
Please organize your Owner’s Manual into three parts.
1. Becoming familiar with me: This section describes the highlights of your personality and style. Many of your comments will be global and relate to both personal and work environments. It is also helpful to include comments specific to work situations. Include your areas of strength and your blind spots and pitfalls.
2. Cautions: This section shares insights on your reaction to stressful situations and confrontations, and red flags that would be helpful for team members to know.
3. Final note: This section declares the areas you are actively working to improve.
Tips
• Think about aspects of your personality and style that would be most important to know about you.
• Write your Owner’s Manual in the third person, as if you were writing about someone else.
• Focus on making your “voice” come through in the writing.
• Limit your Owner’s Manual to two pages.
After you have completed your Owner’s Manual, distribute a copy to each of your team members.
What are the top 3 ways to build trust on your team?