Trust and Communication
11. Apr, 2010 
3 Comments
Trust and Communication – an essential part of working as a team?
I was at a client event very recently where I had the pleasure of hearing Ruby Wax’s perspective on building trust and communication within teams, a topic very dear to my heart and one that I am currently researching.
It seems that trust and communication are the core fundamentals of any relationship both in our working and personal lives. Trust and (honest) communication go hand and hand, you can’t communicate honestly with someone you don’t trust and vice versa. Here are some of the questions I am keen to get some answers to:
“What enables trust and communication in a team, what is the missing ingredient when trust is not there and what does it take to build trust and communication in a team when it’s not there?”
It seems we are all in desperate need of trust and communication to make teams work well and perform at our best. When trust and communication is present in our working relationships our performance seems to rise and we feel like we would do anything for that person. On the other hand when it’s not there we feel cheated, undervalued, protective and suspicious ourselves.
Trust and communication is the foundation of any relationship but when you have a busy, high performing team, it is often the thing that is not valued. Investing time in building trust and communication within a team doesn’t immediately give individuals the results they are measured on or indeed want for themselves.
Many of us (and I include myself) become very focused on achieving individual objectives and goals and actually measure their own success on the achievement of these. When individual success is such a key driver in our society it is difficult to see the value in building true trust and communication with team members or indeed others we are having relationships with.
Ruby Wax approaches this topic from her role as a Leadership Development Consultant and Executive Coach. She has spent that last few years studying Psychology and Neuro Science to gain some understanding of why we behave the way we do and what we can do to have more insight into ourselves.
Her style as always was very entertaining as well as engaging. More importantly I learnt from her insights and perspective and have already applied them in my daily life. She talks around the 4 key areas, Self management (how you manage your responses, body language etc), self awareness (know when you are bullshitting yourself), social awareness, and social management, some of the cornerstones of EQ and many Psychology based theories.
She elaborates on these using two way real life discussions up front which demonstrate the responses of people when put under pressure. A great way of bringing things to the forefront quickly and demonstrating this live.
Some of the learning’s:
- You have to be genuinely interested in others to build trust
- People feel safe when they know something about you
- You can’t trust someone you don’t like – so find something you like about them!
- Think of what we really look like to the outside world to increase our self awareness.
- Trust and communication are built by having a genuine interest and curiosity about other people (not just yourself!)
- How do you communicate honestly – give negative feedback (rather than avoid)
- When you get “out of control” (anger, tearful, overly emotional etc)) it is good to take control of your own emotions and “take time out” she suggested holding a white flag to give yourself space which I thought was a great idea. Also finding a place where you can centre yourself such as holding your feet to the floor, noticing external noises, something that takes you away from your own emotions and calm down.
All in all I loved the insights she offered and in such an honest and engaging way. But for me this discussion has only just started and I am very interested in what others think about this topic. Please write a comment and let me know.
I like what Ruby says. I am always fascinated when people say I don’t completely trust someone. I always ask them ‘ how do you know which bits to trust and which bits not to trust?’ I agree that there is not enough time spent building trust at work. I think that ‘corporate society’ pushes us away from such activity as it is sometimes seen as a sign of weakness to focus on such things. In my experience, the only way to accomplish great things is through trust. It’s as simple as that!
The challenges of managing a diverse global team are quite daunting. Building trust & enhancing communication is absolutely imperative however this is counter to our busy action packed days where the need for ‘immediate’ results & being on conference calls with overseas colleagues can be all consuming.
I struggle with partitioning my time in order to just talk to my team. Trust & communication is the cornerstone of effective high performance leadership. Some good insight from Ruby. Very interesting !
Hey Ian, thanks for sharing your perspective, I think this is a typical challenge many leaders face, even without the challenges of a Global reach!
It does seem that some leaders do manage it and that is the exciting bit. What do some leaders do that enables them to build trust without spending a huge amount of one to one time with their teams?
I think Warren Buffet has managed to do it (although some may disagree) – he states:
“Trust is like the air we breathe. When it’s present, nobody really notices. But when it’s absent, everybody notices.” —Warren Buffett
It is worth having a look at how he works and treats his people. From what I have read and seen he genuinely cares for people, recognises them and is genuinely interested in them.
Warren Buffet’s is a self empowered leader, because he is loyal, sets goals, plans a strategy for achievement, and stays committed until he accomplishes his purpose.
I like looking at examples like this as he is not only successful financially (Forbes Magazine ranks Buffett the third richest person in the world in September 2007 behind Carlos Slim and Bill Gates) but he is known to have the trust of every one that works for him. When interviewed his employees loved working for him and most never leave!
So we have an example of someone that achieves success as well as has the trust of his entire workforce. As Alan commented earlier, the two have to go together it is as simple as that!
The challenge for us all is building and maintaining trust whilst under the pressure of our own goals and objectives, is it as simple as Warren Buffet suggests?