Here I would like to start a series of articles, inspired by the book of Patrick Lencioni “The five dysfunctions of a team”. As it’s a tech blog, I will put more focus on tech teams. The first article will be dedicated to the first and basic dysfunction – the absence or lack of trust in the tech team. To go deeper into the topic, let’s define what is trust?
Definition of trust
In Cambridge dictionary trust is defined as “a belief that someone is good and honest and will not harm you, or that something is safe and reliable”. You can also encounter the following definition in other sources: “trust is a firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something.”, which I believe is limiting to only the reliability of the second party, and not considering the crucial part of its harmfulness.
In the context of building a team, trust is the confidence among team members that their peers’ intentions are good, and there is no reason to be protective or careful around the group.
The five dysfunctions of a team
In other words, trust is readiness and willingness to be vulnerable in front of the teammates.
Let’s do some vulnerability
To consider vulnerability in more details, let’s refer to the most well known professional in this field. Dr Brené Brown is a research professor who has spent the past two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy. She has a viral talk on TED and amazing show on Netflix, both of which I can definitely recommend watching. According to Brené, vulnerability is not that touchy-filly, as you can think from the first glance. It has 3 main components:
Uncertainty + Risk + Emotional exposure
One important note to make here, vulnerability is not disclosure, there is no vulnerability without boundaries. To be vulnerable, you don’t need to talk about the private details of your marriage. Another misconception about vulnerability, adjust to the tech word: “I’m an engineer, I don’t do vulnerability.” Let’s leave it to the security of your code. If you don’t do vulnerability in life, vulnerability does you.
My example of being vulnerable
Do I belong to the group?
Let me provide you with an example of being vulnerable in front of a team. In the tech world, I encountered so many times lunch discussions about ones first computer (usually around the age of 7), first written code (up to 10), and so on. People remember old hardware, old programming languages, old concepts. I came from a poor county and got my first laptop when I was 16 and started to study at the university. I was the same age when I wrote my first program, and I even didn’t like programming from the first time, it came only later. For a long time, I was just silent during such conversations. I could have spent a lot of time and effort pretending being someone I was not. But does my past define how am I good now as an engineer? No, only my current merits.
Time to tell my story
How hard it can be to reveal this in front of each other? First, it had an element of uncertainty: I didn’t know how my team will react and how they will think of me as a professional. Second, it had risk: every group has some unspoken rules on who belongs to this group, and for me, it was the risk that I will no longer be considered as part of tech group. Third, it required emotional exposure, as I needed to reveal my childhood and my own insecurities. In the end, Did it impact my reputation in the team – no, but it definitely made us more connected and open in front of each other. And now, if let’s say I don’t get some referrals to past technologies, the team understands why and can explain it for me, helping me be involved in discussion or decisions.
Symptoms of absence or lack of trust in the tech team
In tech culture in a team with the absence or lack of trust, people will show following behaviour or attitude:
- conceal that they don’t know some technology, framework or concept;
- don’t admit their mistakes;
- feel guilt when they break master, and afraid to seek advice;
- afraid to seek for advise in general and try to solve everything by themselves;
- discuss solutions instead of problems;
- don’t offer help to each other, in fear that it can offend the other side;
- go the safe way, don’t propose new approaches;
- don’t take the risk and don’t challenge each other.
Outcomes of absence or lack of trust in the tech team
Why is it hard to be vulnerable? Because when we have a competitive culture, where we are learnt to protect our reputation, it’s hard to let it go in the work environment. But even it could sound contradictory, lack of vulnerability, which leads to a lack of trust, can lead to killing challenge instead of producing it. Why so? Because people will spend more time and energy on protecting their built image, rather than focus on results and problems solving.
Some examples of consequences of absence or lack of trust:
- the team spend more time on achieving results, as blockers are solved slowly than they could be;
- team morale is going down, which can lead to high turnover;
- people don’t have enough opportunities to grow, as mistakes are not allowed and decisions and made for them;
- results could be not that outstanding, as a team is afraid to take the risk and always go the safest way;
- team performance, in general, can go low, as people don’t challenge each other and afraid to give honest feedback or reveal their weaknesses.
Dealing with the absence or lack of trust in the tech team
It is a common misconception that trust just can be built with time. Yes, time will be needed, but it’s not the only ingredient. The lack of trust is unintentional, and probably even more natural, default mode. Important to realise, that to build trust in the team, there should be intention and effort.
Tools and exercises to build trust according to the book
Below are some tools and exercises provided by Patrick Lencioni in his book.
Personal histories exercise.
It can be a first step in building trust. Every team member should answer the list of not overly sensitive questions, like:
– first job
– worst job
– number of siblings
– childhood challenges
– favourite hobbies
– what kind of superpower you would like to have?
The exercise will help people to start opening up, encourage empathy and understanding.
Team effectiveness exercise
A team member should identify the single most important contribution that every other member makes to the team and one area that they should eliminate or improve. This exercise may involve more risk, but still can be very constructive and positive. Also, it will teach people how to provide each other feedback and show that it’s not harming to do so. The important role of a manager is to explain that work criticism should never be taken personally and remind them of good intentions of a feedback giver.
Personality and behavioural preference profiles
There are a lot of profiling tools, which help to build descriptions of team members in terms of how they think, speak, act. The most popular tools are MBTI and DiSC. They can help people to understand how to adjust to one another and how to communicate with each other in the most effective way.
360-Degree feedback
A very powerful tool, though author of the book recommend to decouple it from performance review and compensation programs. The reason is that it can take political shape, people may not be honest there to avoid the wrong interpretation and ruining someone’s career, or vice-versa use it as a tool to help to promote someone they have a personal preference.
Other tools and exercises
The culture map exercise
In 2015 Erin Meyer published a book “The culture map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business” which became a bestseller. After reading the book, it can be used as a great exercise – to build the team culture map. As a result of a team discussion around their cultural difference, people will get more understanding of the motivation of some behaviour and will be more empathetic towards each other. It can improve their communication and created more bonding.
Improvisation class
The whole concept of improvisation is built on readiness to fail, vulnerability and openness towards other ideas. So having a few team improv classes will show on practice in a game format what does it mean to be open, rely on each other and build on top of each other ideas to come up with the best outcome. Not to mention that it will bring a lot of fun 🙂 I saw even the most introvertive and secure people being playful, open and childish during improv team building.
The role of a leader
By all means, the role of the leader is crucial in this process. Apart from arranging team exercises and using other tools, a leader should:
- be the role model, show by example what does it mean to be vulnerable;
- support and encourage others when they show vulnerabilities;
- discourage toxic, blaming or unsupportive behaviour from anyone from the team if you notice it.
As can be seen, trust is the fundament of a team. Thus, the absence of it will lead to other 4 dysfunctions which will be described in the following articles. Stay tuned.