When teams take the time and are intentional about building vulnerability-based trust, it allows them to make quicker, high quality decisions without surprises, make course corrections with ease and team members are more open and even welcome accountability in order to grow and in fact, gives the organization the ability to be more agile.
Of course, building vulnerability-based trust does not happen overnight. It takes great intentionality and requires time.
Time and Courage.
Trust is deep. Trust is so much more than predictable trust. Trust that is surface-level or trust that dances around topics, placates to satisfy an influential leader or fear. Trust goes beyond the surface and is multi-faceted. Here are four distinctive of trust:
⁃Care: Do you care about what I care about? Will you take care of the interests of the organization, not just your own? Are we in this together?
⁃Sincerity: Can I count on you to be honest and always do what’s right, even if it costs you? Do you mean what you say and say what you mean?
⁃Reliability: Will you keep your word? Will you do what you say, when you agree to do it? Can I rely on you?
⁃Competency: Do you have the skills, expertise and resources to meet expectations? Do you know yourself and the organization? Do you welcome assistance?
These four pillars of trust are vital in understanding and building trust on a team. Trust is reciprocal, it requires every team member to trust and be trusted in these four areas. It’s not a concern however if we have trust in one area and not another. We can build and grow in all four areas of trust. Not trusting someone in one area shouldn’t diminish trust entirely.
Building trust requires courage. It takes courage to speak truth in kind ways. It might take courage to trust anyone because of your personal history. Courage is the mindset that allows us to lean in with curiosity and discover people at a different level. How do we build this type of trust?
1.By getting to know each other personally. Even just sharing about your personal history for two minutes will allow you to know someone at a deeper level. When we know someone’s history, and they know ours… it changes the way we understand them, we trust their motives and they trust our motives.
2.Achieving a big goal or challenge together. Teams that accomplish big things together have a tendency to build trust through the process.
3.Understanding how each team member best contributes to the work flow of projects. Using a tool like Working Genius helps team members learn where each team member best contributes to work. That has a tendency to eliminate guilt and judgment.
When a team leans into building trust and vulnerability through courage, the results are remarkable. We see teams achieving 10X, not just 2x the results they desire all year long, Q1 through Q4. That math just makes sense.