Leadership : Build Effective Team

There are many teams which are productive but they are based on fear. People in team work hard because they have fear to lose his job or humiliated by his boss. They work hard to show that they are working better than others. Everyone is afraid from you, you are puppet master, you are decider, you have power to decide their fate, you are the boss. You tell people what to do, you never listen other’s ideas because you know best, even if you do not know, who will challenge you because everyone is afraid from you and respect on your face.

if this is a type of team you want to run, you should stop reading this blog. Managing team which has trust and commitment on each other is far better than running team based on fear.

Trust Based Team vs Fear Based Team

There are 3 main differences between trust-based team vs fear-based team.

1. Efficiency: Trust based team waste less time. For an example, one person has technical problem and another person knows solution. in fear-based team, first person will not discuss that problem with another person because he will have to admit that he does not know solution. He will be fear of laughter that why he does not know solution of such a simple problem. So, he will spend time to find solution himself. He will get solution but it will take time and will make things slow. In trust-based team, everyone encourages each other to discuss problem and there is no room for laughter because everyone knows that tomorrow they may have the problem to discuss. So, in trust-based team, first person will discuss problem and second person will immediately provide solution. in this case first person is happy because he got solution quickly and second person is happy because he helped team. Team leader is happy because there is no delay in project.
2. Risk: Fear based team always hide critical issues to avoid confrontation. For example, you find a security issue in your application, if you are part of fear-based team, you know that once you tell this problem to your leader, he will blame you and others and give bad rating or may fire you. So, you will do your best to hide this issue or delay as much as possible. If issue is huge, you will start looking for another job, so that issue can expose once you are out. In trust-based team, team knows that they will be appreciated to bring issue on table, team leader will think about that issue, consult with team and leadership to find appropriate solution to fix that security issue or other critical issues to keep project on track.
3. Innovation: You will never hear any new ideas in fear-based team. Because team is afraid that their ideas will be rejected and they will be humiliated with laughter. While trust based team is enthusiastic to share new ideas. They know that they will get compliments, rewards and credits for sharing good ideas.

Build Trust Based Team

The challenge is not getting people to trust you, it’s in keeping that trust, because as a team leader, you need to build trust for the long-term and not as a short-term strategy. To build trust, you need to become trustworthy. If you are trustworthy, you will gain trust from people and you will keep them for longtime. Following are few things, which you should do to be trustworthy

1. Tell the truth to team: Be honest with your team and stick with truth. if you lie on regular basis, sooner or later, team will find this and you will lose credibility. it is very hard to believe you again.
2. Do not reveal secrets: As a part of management, you may have information about layoffs or any other inside information which you are not supposed to share with anyone. You should not reveal that. if team will know this in future, they will upset but they also know that why you hide this and it will increase trust.
3. If you are wrong, accept it: if you find that what you told to team is not true, apologize to team and tell them about your mistake as soon as possible. Making a mistake and then correcting it can create a perception that you are more trustworthy than if you had not made that mistake in the first place. It conveys that you really care about the truth, and that you can be trusted not only to tell the truth as you know it, but to correct matters if you find that you are mistaken
4. Keep your promises: Easiest way to keep promises is not to do any promise which you are not sure that you can not achieve. It is far better not to make a promise than to break one. If you made promise but could not make it, apologize with impacted people and find solution to mitigate it. Do not blame others for this failure
5. Do not steal credit: Trustworthy people never steal someone else credit. Neither management nor team will like it once they will know this and it will be very hard to trust you again.
6. Be predictive: if team can predict on your actions and responses when they will tell you about their mistakes, will make you more trustworthy. If your team knows that you won’t overreact, that you’ll be calm and supportive, and will bring the team together to solve the problem, they won’t hesitate to bring issues to your attention. You’ll have great visibility as to how the entire team is doing, all because they can predict your response and reaction
7. Do not micromanage: if you micromanage and monitor everything your team does, it’s a clear expression that you don’t trust them, and if you don’t trust them, why should they trust you. Do not dictate solution, just guide them and sit back, relax, result will be better than you thought.

Build Trust within Team

1. Hire trustworthy people: Do not hire jerks, no matter what exceptional technical skills he has. If he is not team player, he will not let another team member to trust you and each other. It will ruin all your efforts to make trust-based team.
2. Set example: if team will see you doing things, they will also follow you. So every time think that what trustworthy people do in this situation and do same. When team will see that you always stick with truth, never make false promises, do not hesitate to ask for help, appreciate others and do not steal their credits, team will also follow same. This will increase trust within each other.
3. Set the clear expectation: In fear-based team, expectation is a way to punish. While in trust-based team, expectation is faith. Set clear, unambiguous, explicit expectation. like I expect you to help each other. if help is taking long time, let me know and I promise that I will figure out alternatives to ensure that your work is not impacting. Since you are clear with your ask and you are trustworthy, Team will work accordingly and they will also follow same rules and set clear expectation with each other.

Building trust and making trust-based team is long process, especially when your team members were part of fear-based team or company culture supports fear-based teams. You need to have patience and have to take corrective measures to ensure that you and your team is moving towards building trust on each other.