Trust Points: Why Teams Fall Apart

Why teams work well... or don't

Teams are necessary to achieve the most interesting goals in society and life. Looking at the history of civilizations, businesses, sports, or families, unfortunately, the data presents us with a bleak picture that the most likely outcome of a team is a failure, not success. So why?

Teams in Trouble

Here are some common things I hear from people in teams that are in trouble:

  • "That report is always late. I don't think they are trying hard enough."

  • "I really need _____ to pull their weight.

  • “I know that _____ is assigned to do that task, but I don’t think they will do it, so I’m going to do it for them.”

Yikes. All of these statements reveal what I think is the fundamental cause of most team failures: lack of professional trust between the teammates.

Teams Don’t Fail, Individuals Give Up Until There is No Team

The above phrase was told to me once, and it has held true through every failure of a team I’ve ever witnessed. Short of death, there are very few circumstances that will force a committed, well-functioning team from achieving a goal. There are certain circumstances that can create seemingly insurmountable barriers or extend timelines for success, but in my experience, all are surmountable if a group of people can stay coherent to get through the rough patch.

However, what usually happens is that a particularly trying circumstance comes along and team members start giving up hope that they can ever reach the shared picture of success they had when they joined the team. They give up and probably leave the team. This continues until there is no one left to comprise a “team”.

What Holds Teams Together

Examining what a “team” is helps to reveal the key ingredient for keeping a team together through challenges. Teams are groups of people. The “team” is really a set of person-to-person relationships between each member of the team that comprises the whole.

So the key to team success relies not on some mystical shared property of the “team”, but instead on a key factor in the building blocks of a team: relationships.

Trust: The Currency of Relationships

I think we all have some basic understanding of trust. You likely have a decent understanding of how much you trust people in your non-working lives: your family, your friends, etc.

Trust in a team or workplace is the same, but with another dimension. I would put to you that there are two types of trust involved in a professional relationship: personal trust and professional trust.

Personal trust: Do you trust this person as a human to do basic human things. For example, I would bet that you trust most of your teammates enough to drive you to lunch, watch your dog on the weekend, etc.

Professional trust: Do you trust this person in the context of your team’s goal? Professional trust is the more interesting and important aspect of teams. You can trust a teammate as a human, but do you have a high trust relationship when it comes to the team’s shared goal? You might trust your boss to save your life if you were choking, but do you trust them enough to have your back if you need more time on a deadline?

The work of teams is to create an environment where all individuals are in the process of developing a high professional trust relationship with the other members of the team.

Trust: Dynamic in Nature

One of the harder to accept concepts regarding trust is that it is not static, meaning that it can and will change over time. Just because you have high trust in your teammate today, does not guarantee that you will next year.

Trust between people is gained or lost through a continuous story of interactions. One unfortunate thing about the world is that we lack control over many aspects of our lives. This means that unavoidably, you will do things either on purpose or accidentally that will decrease others’ professional trust in you.

For example, you may be in a situation where you need to make a choice, and no matter which choice you make, you will decrease a different person’s trust in you.

Trust Points: Visualizing Trust

This is all well and good, but the real trick is applying the concept of the continuous rebuilding of trust in your everyday actions.

I found this rather overwhelming until I decide on a metaphor I have come to enjoy quite a lot: Trust Points.

I pretend that trust is a thing that could be represented with a set of imaginary points. Each interaction you have regarding a particular individual usually results in a positive or negative exchange of trust points between the two of you.

For example:

  • Meeting a deadline on time: Trust points increase

  • Confiding honestly in a teammate about a challenge you are facing: Trust points increase

  • Failing to do something you promised to do: Trust points decrease

Practically I don’t believe that it’s possible to actually quantify trust or track it in the absolute sense, but it is useful to imagine if an action will have a positive or negative effect on the trust points that someone places in your relationship.

Doing so has helped me establish a clear set of criteria for how to make choices regarding teammates.

Summary

In review, we talked about trust being the foundational element amongst individuals and therefore teams. We discussed the dynamic nature of trust and I presented my favorite tool for visualizing actions and consequences in relationships: Trust Points.

The best teams are the ones that consistently create situations for individuals to score trust points with each other.

How is your team creating opportunities to score trust points with each other?

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