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How does one build trust in a work team? While the answer is not a simple one and there are many aspects to it, it really is an important question.
It is our deep belief that trust is the thread with which the tapestry of human relationships is woven. Without this thread human relationships don’t flow. And, in the context of teams, performance will not be optimal.
All of us were created with a deep need to live lives of meaning and purpose. While it is critical to achieve this in our families and personal lives, this only represents a small portion of our lives time-wise.
In fact, those in full-time employment spend an estimated 70% of their waking hours at work. This highlights just how important finding meaning and purpose at work is to personal well-being.
Since the world of work is organised in terms of teams, much of this will be worked out in the team environment, and increasingly so.
A recent study, published by the Harvard Business Review, found that “the time spent by managers and employees in collaborative activities has ballooned by 50% or more” over the last two decades.
In search of the critical components of the perfect team
Google recently set out to find out what it takes to create the perfect team. After spending enormous amounts of money assessing, analysing and understanding every possible aspect of 180 teams across the organisation, there was nothing that showed that a specific mix of personality types or skills or background would predict a successful team.
Google, which is so good at finding patterns that it is advising the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on upcoming diseases globally, could not identify strong patterns amongst its own teams!
After even more research, what it eventually found (after linking its own findings to previous research published in the journal Science in 2008) boiled down to this: effective high-performing teams need psychological safety.
Clear team goals and a culture of dependability were found to be important too, but the critical component for consistent and continued team success is psychological safety.
This sounds a lot like what neuroscientist Evian Gordon is talking about when he says that the fundamental organising principle of the brain is to steer away from things that are threatening, and towards those that feel good, like rewards. This drives our social behaviours.
So Google did not come up with revolutionary conclusions (which is somehow comforting), but rather confirmed and eloquently contributed to this field of study.
In fact, Maslow, more than 70 years ago, concluded that humans have a hierarchy of needs that starts with physiological needs and safety. Only if these basic needs are met, can we advance to the higher level needs such as a need for love, belonging and self-actualisation.
Put another way:I can't fulfil my purpose etc. unless my stomach is full and I feel safe. Extrapolating this concept to groups and teams, executive coach and instructor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Ed Batista, says that teams require psychological safety, and also trust and intimacy, before they can take risks, be vulnerable and experiment, and ultimately learn together and evolve.
Danie Eksteenis a faculty member at USB Executive Development and founder of Strategic Human Capital Consulting in Cape Town. Danielle du Toit is senior vice president of global customer success at Bullhorn in Boston, USA.
This is a shortened version of an article that originally appeared in the 4 August edition of finweek. Buy and download the magazine here.
