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This is one article from the issue of August, 2002.
For other stories and articles, go to the Current Issue.
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The Insider |
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Promises: Roots of Business
Promises Yield Trust; Trust Yields Results
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You might think capitalism is based on trading money for something...but, before you get to that point, the parties have to trust each other. How do we trust, where does trust come from, how does it grow, and what does it have to do with  ?
You work with others...you co-labor. And, some people do it better than others. The people in the best teams have one essential characteristic: They trust each other. It's not blind trust, but trust built and enriched over time. It's something they work on, both within themselves and with each other.
Really productive collaboration can only be done with people who trust. When you trust your colleagues to "cover" for you when you make a mistake, to support you as you take a risk, you're more likely to step out of your safety zone and do something truly spectacular. When you can trust them to tell you the unvarnished truth you can afford to be more honest, more authentic. Even when you merely "collaborate" with an anonymous retail clerk in a store, you trust that they'll give you the right change (but you still check, to be sure, until you've built a reliable, trusting relationship).
On the other hand, if you don't trust your peers, you'll be guarded and secretive. If you don't trust them to tell you the truth, you'll hide behind socially acceptable behaviors.
If you don't trust the clerks in a store, you'll stop shopping there.
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So, the
foundation of collaboration is trust. What's really challenging,
though, is how to be consistently trustworthy, and to help others be the
same. We build trust with promises.1
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| "Our
work is judged by the quantity and quality of promises we make."
—Thomas
Stewart
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Trust: What Is It?
Trust is an odd word: There are "trust funds," and there are beliefs we mislabel "trust." The only trust that truly matters, however, is the trust that people build between each other. In the dictionary, trust can be a noun or a verb. When you think of it as a verb, something you (or another person) can do, you're closer to what's really important.
Elements of Trust
| Personal — the really interesting issues are how people learn to trust each other,
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| Contextual — how trust changes, depending on the topic, and
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| Earned — how people behave that encourages (or diminishes) trust.
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Personal
The one kind of trust relevant to collaboration, business, commerce and industry is how we trust each other. You may trust your dry cleaner to return your clothes clean and undamaged; if they violate that trust, you'll find another merchant.
Individuals have different standards of trust; you might trust Marie, and I might not. From Marie's vantage point, she has to be aware of our differing standards for trust, and if she may have to adapt her behavior to meet some of my requirements.
Contextual
We trust in a context, environment or sphere. While you might trust a business colleague to deliver a project on time, you might be unwilling to invite that same person home for dinner. Would you trust the owner of your local dry cleaning store to buy your next car for you?
In the context of a team, trust can take months to fully develop. If the team is scattered across a wide area, you'll have fewer daily cues to help you build trust, so it can take even longer. Fortunately, there're things you can do to hurry it along.
On the other hand, working across distances makes it more likely that we'll base trust on the work delivered, rather than personal manners or mannerisms.
Earned
Finally, trust must be earned. You may naturally trust (or distrust) people you've just met; everybody's different. Over time, however, that initial assessment will become more contextualized ("I trust Geo to come up with good ideas, but I would never trust him with my credit card!"), and more refined ("I've learned to trust Geo to come up with new ideas, especially regarding finances.")
Good teamwork is founded on the ways we earn trust from others by being trustworthy and how we communicate the essence of what others must do to earn our trust.
Four Stages of Team Evolution
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In our experience, the productivity of the team is directly correlated to the degree of trust among the team members.
Bruce Tuckman, proposed we think about the development of teams in four
stages.2
The team first forms, each person bringing their own experiences, beliefs and expectations of other participants.
As we get to know each other, trust and productivity grow...for a while.
It might appear that a certain level of trust and productivity will be achieved and go on forever (the dotted line).
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Over time, however, others will fail to meet our initial expectations. When that happens, productivity falls, and the team begins to behave with a distinct lack of "team spirit." Storming has begun.
To the experienced manager, this is a good sign, because the initial euphoria of the team has worn down to the point where people begin to recognize the need for some problem-solving.
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Take that opportunity to depart from the assigned work of the team, and begin focusing on the processes of the team itself.
An experienced facilitator can encourage people to begin expressing their frustrations, to learn more about each others' strengths and weaknesses.
While engaging in really getting to know each other we begin to evolve common "norms" for the team.
Norms are our shared assumptions about what we do and what each person can contribute.
That's the basis for real, authentic trust and puts each of us at the center of a network of trust relationships where we can work on building trust where we believe its needed most.
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| Learn
to eagerly expect the first words of anger or frustration from co-workers.
That event
signals you've moved beyond politeness and into "Storming."
That's the doorway through which you must pass to "Norming," where
you can arrive at real mutual trust.
If there's no
climate of trust, fear of honest emotional expression will delay or prevent
healthy "Storming."
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If you've done the hard work of Norming with sensitivity, team performance can soar. But, getting there can be risky; people have to be authentic enough to risk the vulnerability of sharing themselves. Some teams just never take that risk.
Trust Relationships
In a team of only ten people, you have 18 trust relationships to which you must personally attend: How nine other people trust you, and how you trust each of those nine other people. You have to figure out what each of those people expects of you to be able to trust you, and you have to figure out in which contexts you can trust each other person.
Why bother?
Because trust carries a powerful economic benefit: If you don't trust another person you have to invest a lot more time in carefully defining your expectations and creating (and managing) barriers that keep the untrusted person from engaging in undesirable behavior. The time and cost of every transaction goes up. A team of mutually trusting people will vastly outperform a group of people who're constantly trying to cover for their mutual lack of trust.
For a comprehensive sociological study of how trust works in different cultures and different teams, see the book "Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity," by Francis Fukuyama. It's a deep, complex book, but worth the effort.
Trust Across Distance
Our needs (and strategies) for trust were laid down in our instincts by our hunter-gatherer ancestors, millennia ago. When a band of hunters went out to bag game for the tribe, the guys who went upwind to drive the animals had to trust the other guys to catch them for food. The guys downwind had to trust the guys upwind to drive just a few animals in their direction, not a vast herd that would trample them to death.
Without that trust, hunters, their families and their tribes would have starved.
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Notice how trust evolved to support parts of work being done at a distance.
The two parts of the hunting party couldn't communicate, couldn't hem each other in with rules and restrictions.
They had to build mutual trust to eat. Each person fulfills one or more contributing roles in the team; the work is more than an individual could accomplish.
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| Specialization
is key:
The hunter who
can creep up on animals might not be the best shot with bow-and-arrow.
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When your colleagues are at remote locations, trust becomes even more important: it's vital to achieving the team's reason for being. Trust can deteriorate faster in teams with scattered members because there's little opportunity for us to notice the signs of a colleague who's in trouble...or slacking off. We only notice there's a problem when they don't deliver what they promised.
It's only smart to attend to trust as an integral part of team management. For example, make sure that assigned units of work are consistent with the justified trust a new team member has earned. A newcomer is usually given a short-term goal so we can detect problems early enough to take remedial action. As the team builds trust in that person's productivity, they can be assigned larger and more complex activities.
How Trust Gets Built
Trust is based on promises kept. Jean promises to deliver a sales report by Wednesday; on Thursday our trust in Jean diminishes a bit unless there's something beyond Jean's control that caused the delay. But, when Jean consistently delivers on promises, meeting specifications, on time and within budget, our trust in Jean grows.
Every time you agree to meet another person's expectations—say, to make a phone call, deliver a report, or achieve a business goal—your trustworthiness is at stake. So, when you make your promise, you'll likely expect one in return (they'll do something for you sometime, your report will get read, you'll get a promotion). Every promise you make and keep contributes to your stock of trust held by that other person or group.
The Structure of Promises
A promise can be well- or poorly-formed. The people who earn more trust and build trusting relationships with others know how to properly structure promises. A well-formed promise is:
| Explicit — all parties share the terms of the promise,
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| Positive — you must make a promise that defines what will be done,
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| Actionable — it has to be something the person making the promise can actually do, and
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| Specific — there needs to be evidence that shows the promise has been met.
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Explicit
In the absence of established trust you need to offer (and get) explicit promises in which the important details are explored and understood. If you make (or accept) implied promises, you'll find that one or more of you may be disappointed, and that diminishes trust.
Think back over your interactions of a similar kind, and the things that happened that made you appear untrustworthy. Now, make sure you use that information to shape the details of your promise and of promises you extract in return. You might have promised to write and deliver a final report via eMail by a certain date. However, there're implied promises beneath that. If you're doing word processing with the ancient WordStar and the recipient can't open your report, their trust in you will be diminished. If you know there's an unusual way you like to work, or an unusual expectation you have of the other party, make it explicit.
As you build a trusting relationship, you can let more and more promises become implicit, just "part of the way we do business." That's the benefit you reap when you've earned trust. When a whole team gets to that point, it's called "the team's culture." In the early stages of a business relationship, however, we need to make the details clear and unambiguous. When in doubt, ask.
Positive
Describe what will be done. You can promise to "learn from my mistakes;" it's impossible to "stop making mistakes." You're human; of course, you'll make future mistakes. Think of it another way: If I advise you to "drive East," you know which way to go; if I ask you to "do not drive South," which advise is more helpful? This difference between positive and negative statements is what separates the experts from the wannabes.
When you make promises, find a way to say them in a positive way that lays the foundation for being Specific (below). And, when someone tries to foist off a negative statement as a promise (e.g., "I won't..."), ask them, "What will you do?"
People who want to appear trustworthy often make counterfeit promises, usually stated in the negative form. What they don't seem to understand is trust can be built only on positive statements. You can help them become more trustworthy by helping them shape promises that contribute to trust.
Actionable
A well-formed promise has to be something the person making the promise can actually do. I can promise to deliver this newsletter to you; I cannot make a valid promise to you that thousands of other people will read it at the same time you do. It's simply not within my control.
It's a counterfeit promise when someone says they'll "get that customer to sign the order today." Unless they intend to tote a gun to the meeting, that's a promise they can't keep (what if the customer just left on vacation?). You can help them become more trustworthy by asking for specific things they'll do and help them form a promise like, "I'll call that customer this afternoon and ask them to sign and fax that order to us before they leave for the day."
Specific
There must be some observable evidence that defines when the promise has been met. "I'll call you," is not a promise; add "on Thursday," and the specific day makes it better. But, "What would be the best time on Thursday for me to call you?" sets the stage for really good criteria. Agree on time, date and responsible person, and you've got well-formed criteria. When you place the call at the proper time, you'll have met those criteria, and the evidence will be obvious to you both.
Evidence has to be expressed in the five senses: You have to be able to see it, hear it, touch it, smell it or taste it. I can confirm it's Thursday by looking at a calendar. I can confirm it's the appropriate time by looking at a clock. I can confirm you called me by listening to the phone.
On the other hand, if I'm not there to take your call, I will have failed in my reciprocal promise to you and you can justifiably drop your trust in me a notch or two.
Recommendation
Refine the ways your team makes and trades promises. Help them challenge each other to become even more trustworthy. Not only will their productivity soar, people will feel better about their participation in your team.
Footnotes:
1 Stewart, Thomas: "Promises,
Promises", Business 2.0, June, 2002
2 Tuckman, Bruce W. "Developmental Sequence in Small Groups," Psychological
Bulletin, 1965
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