This post is by Thomas Kayser, who worked for Xerox in the area of organizational effectiveness for 30 years. He is the author of two books: “Building Team Power: How to Unleash the Collaborative Genius of Teams for Increased Engagement, Productivity, and Results” and “Mining Group Gold: How to Cash in on the Collaborative Brain Power of a Team for Innovation and Results.” E-mail Tom.
While working at Xerox, one of the tasks I had the pleasure of performing for many years was to facilitate a three-hour segment at our annual “Developing Executives” orientation within the development and manufacturing organizations. While I did many exercises to help high-potential individuals better understand the behavior of great leaders, I always made sure to use a portion of that time for them to wrestle with this question:
“What do you believe are the core operating principles all team members — including the manager — need to live by, on a daily basis, in order to develop trust within and across work teams?”
We would develop ideas in subteams, share them with the whole group and debate merits of the ideas. Over the years, a vital set of behaviors emerged that became known as the “Trust Operating Principles” across D&M. What these behavioral principles evolved into was a small set for managers to perform routinely and a set for managers and teammates to carry out on a routine, collaborative basis.
So if you are looking for ways to build trust within and across you teams and functions, there is no better place to start than right here. Remember: Trust is the road over which everything else rides!
Managers
Believe in us — our motives, knowledge and skills
- Get to know each team member’s capabilities, interests and skills.
- Understand the process capability of your full team and build on it.
- Share information with team members that will allow them to understand their tasks and how they fit into the bigger picture.
- Have faith in team members to set appropriate objectives.
- Delegate decision-making authority: We want it; we need it; we won’t abuse it.
- Negotiate realistic expectations, then have faith in team members’ ability to deliver what we are being paid to do.
Provide honest business communication
- Share good and bad results.
- Tell the truth — always; no sugar coating, no politics, no spin doctoring.
Managers and Teammates
Demonstrate open, honest communication at all times
- Your word is your bond!
- Share information that is important to others — no hidden agenda.
- Explain reasons behind statements, requests and decisions.
- Recognize fruitful friction as a key to critical thinking, and respect another teammate’s right to disagree.
- Criticize constructively by sticking to the issue and not getting personal.
- Demonstrate that you are listening with understanding — even if you disagree — by periodically clarifying and confirming what others are saying.
Make realistic commitments and keep them
- If you say it, do it!
- Do not overcommit. Know your process capability so you can make realistic commitments to one another.
- Admit you don’t know something versus giving a wrong answer or making a false promise.
- If you find, because of changing circumstances, you can’t keep your commitment, renegotiate it.
Work together
- Be responsive to one another’s needs by offering, and accepting, assistance.
- Welcome the messenger who brings bad news at the earliest possible opportunity because this maximizes one’s ability to deal with it.
- Form natural and informal subteams to “move the ball forward” and accomplish tasks that are critical but languishing.
- Bring potential solutions to the table along with the problem.
Discuss these with your teammates, commit to them, live by them and feel trust begin to grow.
Image credit: webphotographeer, via iStockPhoto.com
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This is a good list – I agree with this definition of trust. And it's also a problematic list. Why? Because it's long, it's got the 'duh' factor, and it's hard to do. This is a very tricky subject, trust. It's comlex and layered. I think what makes it difficult to manage and do is that your listed items must be symbiotic: every item on the list must co-occur with all the other factors to exist. A lot of my clients really struggle with that.
Hi Abby,
The list may seem long but it only covers FIVE PRINCIPLES, two that manager's must enact routinely and three that every team member (including the manager) must practice routinely.
In developing this list of five principles with Xerox Hi-Po's I always said, "these are all well and good (absolutely necessary) but how would people operationalize these." In other words, BEHAVIORALLY what would people need to do to to bring these principles to life? Said differently, what does each principle "look like", "smell like", and "taste like"? How would you know a principle if you saw it?
So within each of the five principles are a number of key behaviors that the teams complied over several years from their experiences to operationalize each principle. Every teammate does not need to practice every single behavior under every principle in order to build trust within and across teams. One or two different behaviors done well by different teammates WITHIN EACH PRINCIPLE will suffice in building team trust.
For managers, I suggest making a commitment to do three things initially: (1) Get to know each team member’s capabilities, interests and skills; (2) Negotiate realistic expectations, then have faith in team members’ ability to deliver what they are being paid to do; (3) Tell the truth — always; no sugar coating, no politics, no spin doctoring. These three will lay down the first couple of bricks in the road of trust.
The key learning point here is that there are a number of options for making these five principles personal an individual–perform the ones most natural for you! However, my experience confirms that most behaviors do get practiced, COLLECTIVELY, under each principle, and when that happens, team trust flourishes. All teammates (and the manager is a teammate), each genuinely performing a few behaviors, sincerely and without hidden agendas, can build a solid brick road of trust over which everything else can ride and more ably function.
Thanks for your initial comments.
Tom Kayser
[...] have to build trust. One of the easiest ways to begin a process of trust building with your team, he explains, is to develop a core of operating principles that you live by on a daily [...]
Interesting article however, it also lacks the MOST critical element required to "Build Trust Across Teams"! What is that critical element? As a mediator, educator, coach, advocate and activist of this critical element it is beyond amazing that it is consistently ignored. My research and experience has shown a constant pattern focused on "engagement", "organizational development", "business communication", “Developing Executives”, "Leardership and Innovation" on and on.
Yet, the #1 deterrent to workplace or organizational failure continues to be placed on the back burner or not on the stove at all! How can there be something called “Trust Operating Principles” with no major emphasis on "Basic Employee Rights" education for executives, managers, supervisors and employees. Even if we set aside the many biases brought to the workplace there's still what I call a culture of "workplace blindness".
This workplace blindness usually manifests itself in one of two ways and a combination of both.
1) The "master-slave" cultural management mindset. A willful corporate attitude creating a workplace refusing to accept the reality of "partnership" between employer and employee.
2) The "no clue" cultural mindset. How many times do employers "turn loose" managers and supervisors with little or no interpersonal skills, management training and almost always no clue about or exposure to any substantive Basic Employee Rights education?
These two areas of "workplace blindness" are the norm not the exception in the American workplace whether entry level staff or upper executive levels.
For example, Suzy Q accepts an executive level position with ZYX corp. Six months after the "honeymoon" is over she finds the workplace a hotbed of sexual harassment, gender discrimination, retaliation and more, all aimed right at her!
Now what? None of the career success courses she learned prepared her for this moment. If Suzy had taken the time to learn Basic Employee Rights before seeking and accepting the position she would've been far better prepared to deal with these workplace issues. Likewise, a management culture focused on "partnership" that provides truly substantive workplace rights education becomes a natural environment for effective “Trust Operating Principles”.
"Trust is the road over which everything else rides!" Workplaces that ignore or trivilize the critical importance of knowledge, training and respect for basic employee rights education can never claim any truth to that statement.
While trust is critical, so is caring.
This reminds me of the John Maxwell quote, "People (a.k.a., employees) don't care how much you know until they know how much you care."
I would guess there's a strong positive correlation between a manager's level of caring and an employee's level of trust.
Thanks for sharing this information.
I have been working with teams for over a year in a manufacturing environment. Every positive thing that we can share with each other is helpful. The objections will always be there.
Now I am focusing on a new metric for success on teams:
20- Early and eager adapters
60- Willing & able
20- Detractors ( ignore & move the team on!)