The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team: Absence of Trust
Creating a successful and high-functioning team is easier said than done. Even workplaces with the most professional, hard-working and technically sound employees can find their team running into performance problems. You spend at least 40 hours a week with your work family - so naturally, you don’t want to spend most of that time battling issues.
So why do high-potential teams still struggle with cohesion and productivity?
According to leadership expert and best selling author Patrick Lencioni, any given team can struggle from one or all of five dysfunctions:
Dysfunction 1: Absence of Trust
Dysfunction 2: Fear of Conflict
Dysfunction 3: Lack of Commitment
Dysfunction 4: Avoidance of Accountability
Dysfunction 5: Inattention to Results
If you master all five, you’ll see your productivity skyrocket. As Lencioni puts it "If you get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time."
In this article, we’ll take a look at the first of the five dysfunctions - absence of trust.
What does an absence of trust look like in a technical workplace?
There’s an absence of trust when people in the team struggle to be vulnerable with each other. Do people fess up when they’ve made a mistake? How often do your technical experts ask their teammates for help? A lack of vulnerability leads to tension in team meetings, which is often indicated by silence. And a lack of challenge around each other’s ideas.
How to diagnose an absence of trust in your technical team
David Maister is a clever man who knows a lot about trust. In 2000, he outlined his trust equation in his book ‘The Trusted Advisor’. This equation tells us just how to build trust at home and at work. And it’s the best place to start if you want to instill or increase trust in your technical team.
According to David’s equation, trust comes from consistently demonstrating three behaviours while keeping a fourth behaviour at bay:
Credibility: qualifications, skills, proof of expertise - “I know John can do the job because she’s got a degree and 20 years of experience”
Reliability: getting the job done on time, every time - “I trust Mary to do the job because she always shows up to meetings and delivers what’s required each sprint”
Intimacy: knowing someone on a personal level as a human being - “I know a bit about Eithne’s life and she’s a good friend”
The fourth element of trust is self-orientation and this is can sabotage the first three elements in one fell swoop. Are your intentions self-serving or for the team?
If you’ve seen the signs of an absence of trust in your technical team, break it down into the four elements of the trust equation to get to the root of the problem.
How to build trust in your technical team
Lencioni suggests two key things for building or increasing trust in any team:
Trust starts at the top. As a leader, you can kickstart the increase of trust within your team. This means making the first move to show vulnerability. Ask for help or admit that you’re not good at something. Once your team members see you leading by example, they will see it’s safe to do so too.
Help your team members get to know each other better. This could be an ice-breaker at the start of your team meetings. Or dropping some news into conversation during your 1.1s. Or getting the team together for a lunch or activity out of the office. Whatever works best for your team, it’s up to you to help make people feel more comfortable about being human while at work.
As seen by Wires Uncrossed
To understand what an ‘absence of trust’ looks like in practice, we recently worked with a CIO who joined a new organisation to lead an established IT team. After a few months, he noticed that there was a negative atmosphere in the office, and heard negative feedback about his leadership.
Using the trust equation, we worked with him and his team to assess the situation. Credibility and reliablility were high so these elements of the trust equation were unlikely to be the source of distrust. However intimacy was lacking. The team had yet to see that he was interested in getting to know them, and felt that he was reluctant to share information about himself.
There was an absence of trust, because the CIO hadn’t taken the time to get to know them.
Increasing intimacy with the team wasn’t easy in a technical environment where people don’t tend to share intimate details of their lives. So we started by setting up a weekly call so that he could share what was going on in his world. Then over time, he started to reach out to others to ask them to share about their work and themselves.
Sometimes the chat was interesting, sometimes it wasn’t. But his team knew that for 30 minutes each week, they were his #1 priority and had an opportunity to get to know him. They started to see that he did care and was willing to share more about himself and his work. And so the seeds of trust were planted and nurtured.
Images:
https://unsplash.com/photos/Uduc5hJX2Ew
