Renowned business author Patrick Lencioni likes numbers. You can tell by the way he titles some of his books: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team, The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive, The Three Big Questions for a Frantic Family, The Five Temptations of a CEO, and The Three Signs of a Miserable Job. So it came as no surprise when I recently happened across a brief article by Lencioni titled, “The Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team.” I don’t want to outline his entire team-building program for you (it’s copyrighted), but I do want to use it as a springboard for a discussion about the foundation of Lencioni’s or anyone else’s team-building program. If your company as a whole doesn’t function as a team as well as you’d like, or if individual teams within your company don’t function the way you think they should, please continue reading below.
“The toughest thing about the power of trust is that it’s very difficult to build and very easy to destroy.” – Tom Watson, IBM
Any team-building program I’ve ever come across (and I’ve come across a lot of them) starts with getting team members to count on one another, to depend on one another. In short, it starts with building trust. Some programs try to jump start the process of building trust with some gimmicky exercises (like asking each team member in turn to fall over backwards and “trust” his teammates to catch him), but in my experience, building trust takes time and it takes effort. Shortcuts and gimmicks don’t lead to the kind of deep, long-term trust that a truly effective team must have. So let’s look at a few of the things that, over time, will build a strong bond of trust.
Consistency. Honor your promises. Make your word your bond. Team members need to know that that they can count on their fellow team members to do what they say they’re going to do . . . not some of the time, not most of the time, but every time. And this needs to apply to every commitment a team member makes whether it’s bringing a big project in on time and on budget, or stopping for donuts on the way in to work. The attitude needs to be, “If Mary says she’s going to do it, it’s as good as done. You can take it to the bank.” NOTE: Just to be clear here, we’re talking about “consistency” in a positive context. If I can always rely on a fellow team member to throw me under the bus every time he or she has a chance, that doesn’t count and is unhelpful to the whole team-building effort. But you already knew that, right?
Accountability. This goes right along with consistency. If team members are not willing to be held accountable to do what they say they’re going to do, how can anyone trust them to do it?
Familiarity. It’s a lot easier to build trust if team members relate to one another as friends and colleagues than it is if they only see themselves as co-workers. Trust doesn’t grow very readily if the only bond between team members is that their cubicles happen to be adjacent to one another.
Respectful communication. When trying to solve problems or explore new ideas, robust, even emotional, debate within a team is a healthy thing . . . as long as it stays respectful and professional. But if the debate becomes personal and abusive . . . if team members start attributing unworthy motives to one another . . . trust breaks down. Effective teams learn to disagree without being disagreeable.
Integrity. Be honest. Don’t hold back information or omit important details. Don’t try to take personal credit for what the team does. And when you screw up (as we all do from time-to-time), don’t try to cover it up, offer excuses, or shift blame. Just own it, do what you can to fix it, and move on.
As noted earlier, this stuff takes time and it takes effort. None of the things discussed here will generate trust overnight. They must be demonstrated over and over and over again until they become ingrained in the team’s DNA, until they become habits. But once real, long-lasting trust has been built and maintained, you will have created the strong foundation for a truly effective, results-oriented team.
Rock Solid Business Development
Phone: (847) 665-9134
andy@rocksolidbizdevelopment.com
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