The word frustrating, perhaps infuriating comes to mind when I think about both business and sports team’s I have either witnessed or been involved with that have performance results that are terrible. I’m talking about consistently poor results. Results that don’t make sense based on numerous other factors.
From an outsider’s perspective peering into a poorly performing team, they may quickly decide they know why the team is experiencing the results they are. However, it’s not that simple. In fact, if you were to use the analogy of an onion having numbers of layers, this is how the team’s performance needs to be looked at. It’s almost never one thing, but there is a factor that can largely contribute negatively to a team’s performance. Yes, you guessed it, it’s the element of trust. Or rather lack of it.
Independent of whether we are discussing a work or sports team, both function on an often-unspoken rule of having at least a minimum trust level. Think of this as being like gas in your tank, or perhaps a minimum charge amount on your car. The vehicle will operate, but if you don’t refuel or recharge it, it will eventually cease to work. This is how the aspect of trust works to support a team. Although, depending on where the team is at in terms of the four aspects of a team’s organizational cycle (e.g., forming, storming, norming, performing), they will either have a strong amount when they are performing, or a limited amount when they are in the forming and storming phase.
When a team is in the earlier phases of moving towards norming and performing, the trust level is growing. Not always, but generally it is at a reasonable level. I do want to point out though that a performing team can absolutely slide back down to a storming cycle. This happens when what I’ll refer to as “trust deposits” have not been made to support the trust health and “trust bank account”. Think of an action that can negatively impact a team. This would be considered a “withdrawal” from the trust bank. So, it’s critical that the leader or sports coach is aware of the health and state of their team’s “trust bank”.
Although it might seem obvious that trust can impact a team’s performance, what tends to happen is that the trust aspect either is in a state of slowly growing, maintaining neutrality, or receding in small or large doses. The smaller doses of trust growth or erosion are harder to detect, so it is up to the leader to have a strong pulse on this. However, also keep in mind that the leader isn’t ultimately responsible for the team achieving the “trust level” they will need to attain to be a healthy and highly functioning team. That’s where the members of the team play a critical role.
Independent of a team member understanding how they each contribute to the team functioning from a strong trust level is critical and shouldn’t be something that anyone takes for granted. This is like assuming that someone else on the team is doing both their job and yours, or playing their role, and taking on aspects of yours too. Certainly not an ideal scenario, as this arrangement tends to breed discontentment and resentment. When these two factors begin to emerge, they will quickly begin to erode a team’s collective trust level.
I’ve seen this type of dysfunction occur on both sports and work teams. The good news is that there are some actions which can be taken to quickly remedy this challenge. One of them being what I’ll refer to as “constructive conversation”. In other words, the individuals on the team who feel like they can’t trust other members of their team for various reasons, taking the time to have a conversation with the members who have taken too many “trust withdrawals”. Yes, this can be a difficult conversation to have, but it will be necessary to work towards restoring the trust bank account.
There is an element of confidence and bravery going to be required to have a constructive conversation with either one or multiple people. If you are the one who is going to be doing the talking, you may or may not be prepared to handle this conversation without some support, and this is perfectly fine. In fact, everyone can benefit from additional support in terms of what it will take to restore either pockets of trust on your team, or in extreme cases, the entire team.
Regardless of whether you need additional support with restoring trust at a minimal or maximum level, I have some suggestions for you to consider handling your trust building or restoration scenario.
- The leader or sports coach is going to need to assess and determine what the trust level of the team is. Use a scale of 1-10, with ten being the highest trust level. Be brutally honest with what you think this number is, as it won’t be of any benefit to you or the team to inflate the number.
- With your trust number level determined, assess whether the team has pockets of trust levels that are acceptable, and whether there are pockets (e.g., roles on a team, or departments within an organization) that are operating at a respectable trust bank number.
- There is a chance there are one or a handful of people on the team who are contributing to the trust level numbers being low or high. Consider what the members who are contributing to the health or demise of the trust level may be doing. Either independently, or collaboratively. Potentially also either consciously, or subconsciously.
- Is there a clear leader? Someone who is the actual workplace leader by title, or known as the head sports coach who should be playing a more contributory role in terms of helping to increase the team’s trust bank level? Sometimes people who hold the title of manager, director, vice president or captain are not fulfilling their obligation to help support having a higher trust bank level. In some cases, if you were to ask an outsider if they could tell who the named leaders in title are, they can’t. This should be obvious, and if it isn’t, the people in these roles need to understand the impact they are having on their respective team.
- As we know, trust is earned. Is your team doing things that will allow each member to earn the trust of one another? Or are you seeing blatant actions which are chipping away or rapidly taking the trust level down?
- Having the workforce leader or sports coach be prescriptive in terms of communicating both what and where they expect their team’s trust level to be at needs to be discussed frequently. When trust levels are back to being at a high level, this will be a very short team conversation. If they are not at a high trust level, the leaders and or sports coaches and their respective teams should be prepared to focus a significant amount of attention on this critical team dynamics component.
Every team wants to be successful, and they can be, so long as they know the element of having high trust levels is going to be an essential foundation ingredient. An ingredient that is critical to get right. Most importantly, having a high level of trust will provide a team with an opportunity to launch from, with the goal of working towards achieving success together.
TAGS: #Trust #Teams #Sports #Leader #Leadership #Sportscoach #Teamdynamics #Success #Management #Communication #Business #Management #Mindset