In our first blog within this “Cultivating Team Effectiveness in a New Paradigm” series, we explored strategies to support team clarity during a paradigm shift. Traditionally stable and leader-driven teams are now evolving into dynamic, diverse groups with flexible team boundaries, adaptable roles, and a heavy reliance on remote work and technology. This week we explore and reflect on how Trust can be cultivated to enhance teams’ ability to perform and thrive in this new paradigm.
Co-Creating Team Trust
In our experience, effective teams build trust by taking the time to truly get to know each other, develop solid relationships, and determine the best ways to collaborate. This intentional investment in relationships creates a safe and inclusive environment where team members feel comfortable speaking up, asking questions, taking risks, and making suggestions without fearing backlash. Trust helps everyone get along better, reduces miscommunication, and makes it easier to view each other positively. When team members trust one another, it fosters open communication, collaboration, and a sense of shared purpose, leading to more cohesive, resilient and effective teams.
Due to our personalities or life experiences, some of us inherently trust people right away, while others believe trust must be earned. There's no right or wrong in this spectrum of trust. The important thing is to become aware of where we sit on this spectrum and understand where others might sit too. This awareness helps us avoid assumptions and prevents disappointment when others have a different relationship with trust than we do.
In a team context, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach for building trust. We usually advise leaders to meet their teams where they are. Is the team in a forming, norming, storming, or reimagining phase? Understanding the team's current stage sets the tone for the types of conversations, mindsets, behaviours, and practices you want to encourage to cultivate trust.
Strategies to Boost Team Trust
Sharing Responsibility for Team Trust - Cultivating team trust is a collective, ongoing effort. As team members come and go, ensuring new or temporary members are inducted into the team's ways of working is everyone's responsibility. Encouraging a mindset of open-mindedness to adapt to newcomers' perspectives can also be beneficial.
Strengthening Team Members’ Personal Leadership - Personal leadership is the foundation for scaling leadership - the impact of "me" on the "we". It involves self-awareness and the ability to self-regulate to work more constructively with others. When teams embark on this journey together, members are more likely to recognize when they are triggering each other and commit to pausing, reflecting, and resetting interactions, taking personal responsibility for their impact on each other.
Building Relationships - It is incredible what we learn about people when we hold off assumptions and take the time to unpack their layers. Taking time to understand each other's strengths, areas of development, personality, and life circumstances is crucial as teams become more fluid and engage virtually. Quality conversations, both on and outside the job, significantly strengthen connections, even as team members come and go. As team’s boundaries become more flexible and teams are impacted by a network of relationships within and outside, consciously attending to the relationships beyond the team will positively impact the dynamics and performance within the team. It's important to note that strong relationships do not necessarily equate to being "friends" rather to fostering a supportive and collaborative environment where mutual respect and understanding prevail.
Fostering Psychological Safety - Creating a psychologically safe environment where everyone feels valued and respected is a shared responsibility. An essential step is ‘container building,’ which involves establishing clear expectations about what team members need from each other to feel safe to contribute freely. A psychologically safe environment also enables team members to openly share honest feedback knowing it will be taken positively and used for growth. It also encourages open dialogue about difficult topics, conflicts, and challenges, and allows team members to express their true selves, admit mistakes, and seek help without fear. This openness creates a dynamic setting where continuous learning, growth, and resilience can thrive.
Effective Leadership in Creating Trust
To cultivate a culture of trust in teams leaders need to transition from acting as central mediators, often trying to resolve all issues themselves, to encouraging shared responsibility among team members. This shift requires leaders to let go of the need to control and instead empower and support team members to take ownership of their impact on the team culture.
Leaders might fear losing control, overloading their teams, or resist the uncertainty and risk associated with delegating, which are natural reactions to change. Recognising that the leadership styles and mindsets that brought us to this point may not take us further is essential for our growth as leaders. Being willing to let go of old ways AND building confidence and capacity in our people by providing clear expectations and support, valuing experimentation, and viewing mistakes as opportunities for learning and growth are crucial elements in this transition process.
"Remember, teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability." Patrick Lencioni
Join us next week as we continue to explore how to cultivate team effectiveness in this new paradigm through the lens of Team Impact.
