EngineerHer

Last week’s post on saying no brought me nicely along to a post on building trust. Because the way I run my team is based on trust. And that trust goes both ways. So, there’s a few things we need to consider when doing this sort of team building work.

And yes, I know, team building gets a bad rep – either of forced fun and enjoyment or unmitigated piss up and both are bad. Well, both have their place, but honestly, team building isn’t just a single event. It’s a strategy and an approach of a leader.

(Yes, I feel quite strongly about this!)

What does trust look like in a team?

Trust works up, down, and side to side in teams. By which I mean the team must trust the leader, the leader must trust the team and the team must trust each other. And that’s hard to build. It requires work. But when it falls into place – oh, it makes life so much easier. And ye should know by now – I’m a big fan of making my life easier. So what does trust look like?

Well, first off, micro managing is out. look, you’ve hired these people – or if you haven’t, someone has. Trust them to do their work, until they prove otherwise. Seriously. Who has bloody time to be managing everyone at that level anyway? Don’t you have enough to be doing?

Because here’s the paradox of trust. The more trust you offer most people, the better care they take to not abuse it. Start off by offering trust. Start by outlining what you expect and what you will and won’t be checking up on. Be the person who starts the trust train. (OK that’s desperately corny, but ye get the idea)

Trust looks like a team coming together when someone says they need help and giving the help. Trust looks like a team doling out tasks as per people’s abilities, without even questioning if the person who says they can hang the moon, can actually hang the moon.

Trust looks like a team member opening up about a tough situation, or asking for help with something not strictly work related. Like highlighting something that’s bothering them about the team and open a dialogue, secure in the trust that it will be dealt with, one way or another.

Some examples?

From my own experience:

• Helping people navigate a new city
• helping someone move house
• Taking on extra work while someone is absent
• Covering an activity that requires an in-person presence because someone has a sick child or sick pet
• Offering and receiving lifts to and from work
• Sharing resources on tough times
• Offering to go with someone for an appointment or a tough conversation
• Offering time to help with college work
• Telling the boss to feck off, they’ve got this handled

The list can go on and on. And there’s a fair few reading this going, Orlagh, look that isn’t team work, that’s friendship. Well yeah. When trust builds within a team, there’s a level of respect grows along with trust. And with that comes friendship.

Now, that’s when the piss-ups can come in handy!

So, how do you build trust in a team?

Well, as I said, firstly, it has to come from the leader offering trust. That’s just a given. Then comes the hard work.

You have to follow up, every single time.

That means taking notes to check in with John on Monday, after he mentioned a tough weekend ahead. It means remember to ask after Mary’s dog, who’s not so young any more. It means taking note of when a younger team member looks tired and checking out if it’s too much partying or too little that’s getting in the way.

It also means when your team tells you to butt out and let them deal with something – you do it. You let them get on with it and find out afterwards, if at all, what happened. If you need to know, they’ll tell you.

It also means sharing information. Sometimes, you need to let information percolate through the team naturally, without it being a big announcement. That means you need to know who to tell first, so the percolation happens. There’s other times, you need to share information with some, but not all of the team – to start with anyway. Again, you need to know your people.

Most of all – when you say you’ll do something, you must do it. Whether it’s chasing up on a pay related issue or figuring out what in God’s name the policy for maternity leave is, you must follow up. Always. And quickly. There’s no point coming back in 3months on most of this stuff. Follow up immediately and keep following up until you can give an answer.

Hold people to account

Once you make it clear what you’re expecting in any given situation, you must hold people to account. We’re not talking giving people grief because they’re a bit behind, when they’ve been down with that awful flu for three weeks. That sort of thing needs a different approach. (Usually of the “OK, what do we take off your shoulders right now” kind)

But, when you’re looking at someone and they’ve had a task for over a week, that should take 5minutes – it’s time to ask some questions. And specific ones at that. “Yeah, I’ve followed up with them” isn’t enough. I want to hear, “I’ve emailed, I’ve called, I’ve teamsed them – I’m close to getting a name as a stalker, but here’s the issue. I can’t get around it.” I want to hear all the routes where they’ve tried to do the task and the obstacles they’ve surmounted so far, as well as the plan for the obstacles they can see coming up…

I rarely impose due dates on my team, but when they tell me “X will be done by Friday”, they know I expect X to be done by Friday. And if I have to impose a due date, like an audit or other such horrendous events, then we talk about what might need to be moved about elsewhere on the timeline.

And sometimes the whole team falls off track. This happened recently with the entire team on a procedure writing project. I fully understand the reasons we fell behind, so we re-grouped, came up with new timelines together and we’re back on track again.

Holding people to account, doesn’t mean nothing ever changes. The team has to know you have their back. But it does mean expectations are clear.

Having the team’s back

Now, this doesn’t mean I’ll never say my team is wrong. I’ll rarely say it, but never is a word I don’t like to use. if someone on my team makes a mistake, or screws up in some way, we’ll deal with it. We’ll have the tough conversations. But I’m not hanging them out to dry in public over it.

That’s just plain not leadership behaviour.

However, we can still have some serious discussions in the background about the whole situation and decide what needs to change so it doesn’t happen again. In the main though, I will back the team to the hilt.

What does that look like?

Well, if there’s a mistake made and someone is out for blood, they come through me. Usually it doesn’t get any further than that to be fair. But if they try, the team knows to stand together. We don’t hide the mistake, but we don’t highlight who made said mistake. We look to processes and systems to fix the mistake. How was this missed? How do we prevent it happening again?

In meetings, if someone has a complaint against my team, I listen, then go back and find out more information. Actually, half the time, I already know the information, because the team tells me when these upsets happen. So I’m able to deal with it there and then. It’s important to be approachable for these instances though, so it can be dealt with quietly rather than in public. Praise to the high heavens in public, deal with constructive feedback in private. And if someone just needs a moaning session or a bitching session, clarify at the start whether they want you to do something or not.

Most of this seems like hard work on the leader?

Well, yeah. Did you expect it to be easy?

Leading is hard work. Putting in the hard work at the start makes it easier as time goes on. But you need to remember that letting trust slip is serious and building trust isn’t a static commitment. It’s an ongoing contract between you and your team. Making sure you’re available to your team, no matter how busy you get. Listening to them. Making time for them.

Your team make your life easy, in the long run.

Trust is amazingly easy to break and amazingly difficult to rebuild. It’s even worse re-building trust after it’s been broken than building it in the first place.

So, build it up and maintain it. Don’t lose it.

Team changes

Remember any change in the team means you need to do some work on trust again. Whether it’s someone leaving or joining, under all circumstances, once there’s a change, there needs to be some trust building again with the new person or the new position.

And as leader, it’s your job to make sure this happens. That means making sure when a person leaves the team, it’s acknowledged. When someone new joins, take the time to introduce the team to the new person and vice versa. Spend the time to reinforce expectations with the team as a whole and explain them in detail to the person joining.

This time is so important to spend, probably the most important time you will spend as a leader.

So, y’know, don’t skimp on it.