5 steps to creating an environment of trust

Note: This is a guest post from @Stephen, editor of Business Development in Context and a co-founder of the work.life.creativity forum. You can follow him on Twitter at @hdbb_stephen. This post is inspired by a book I have recently read, Results Through Relationships, by Joe Takash. I highly recommend this book, for managers and those who aspire to become managers.

Moving Toward Collaboration

Collaboration is a hot buzz-word these days with the advent of Web 2.0 and the rise of a host of online sharing tools. There is however, a lack of training in collaboration and team-building in many businesses. With the economy the way it is, it is likely that anything but the most essential training is going to get sidelined or canceled altogether. Thus it is the responsibility of the manager or leader of a team to create an environment where collaboration skills can be learned. This environment must include room for risk-taking and failure, and the leader must be able to endure, if not encourage, failure to happen as rapidly as possible. Finding out what does not work can be more important than stumbling onto what might work, or only works in certain cases. To that end the leader must go first, be the first to take a risk and share something with the group:

The Leader Can’t Do It All

Takash describes 5 ways that a leader or manager can improve trust and the willingness to take a risk among the members of a team:

1. Question yourself honestly – Question your own motives before you question those of your team. Look deep within yourself to identify your true strengths and weaknesses, then use them to forge strong partnerships. If you are very good at being organized, aid those team members who are not. If you are not good at keeping on track, enlist the team members that are to keep you pointed in the right direction.
2. Solicit feedback from more than one source – It can be difficult to get honest feedback from your direct reports or closest peers until the environment of trust is pervasive. Until then go to your manager or your associates outside your department or company. Tell them about what/how you do things and ask for their honest opinion.
3. Act in your “work” life just like you do at home – Unless you are a spouse-abuser, you should treat your team members with the same respect and care as you would your own family. You are with your team at work as much or more than you are home with your family and your team is there with you. The team deserves that respect rather than being taken for granted (or worse).
4. Practice being authentic and open – This does not mean to act authentic and open, it means to take pains to be authentic and open. Help your team get to know the “real you”, and you will learn to know the “real them”. Few things drive down team morale and productivity faster than phony-baloney behavior. And they can spot it a mile away.
5. Commit to apologizing and forgiving – Your goal is to create an environment risk-taking and the potential for failure that these risks bring. As the leader it is your obligation to be ale to apologize sincerely when your decisions turn out to be wrong. Equally important is the ability to forgive, publicly, when a member of your team fails. Learn from the mistakes and missteps, and move on.

Creating an environment of experimentation can cause considerable anxiety within your team. The more risk-averse members may balk at the idea.

Reward Your Risk-takers

Thomas Edison famously tried 10,000 times before his team discovered the one material that would work for the filament for the light bulb. When asked about it, he is said to have quipped, “I didn’t fail 10,000 times. I found 10,000 things that don’t work.” Edison’s lab must have been a place of remarkable trust and collaboration for the team to press on through 10,000 experiments. On top of all of that:

Edison actually had to invent a total of seven system elements that were critical to the practical application of electric lights as an alternative to the gas lights that were prevalent in that day. These were the development of:

1. the parallel circuit,
2. a durable light bulb,
3. an improved dynamo,
4. the underground conductor network,
5. the devices for maintaining constant voltage,
6. safety fuses and insulating materials, and
7. light sockets with on-off switches.

Before Edison could make his millions, every one of these elements had to be invented and then, through careful trial and error, developed into practical, reproducible components.

Hardly a small project, and certainly one that required an environment of trust.

What can you do for your team to bring about an environment like that?

Light bulb image courtesy: The Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village.