Building Connection and Trust on a Team

What To Do When You're leading a Team to build cohesion and trust

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A question that comes up in a lot of the work that I do is around building connection and trust on teams. 

Whether it’s a manager who is taking over a new team and trying to get started in the right way, a leader wanting to improve the connection on an existing team, or an individual contributor in a cross-functional role or leading a cross-functional project who is trying to build stronger connection amongst stakeholders it feels like a common challenge and topic that many employees face.

In today’s world of work, team based work is the name of the game, as many of us are in cross-functional roles or work on cross-functional teams for at least part of our world. And in the world that I live in and focus on (Fortune 500 companies) it’s really hard to work on a project completely in a silo and by yourself. 

What’s interesting about this is that while so much of our work is done on teams, so much of our focus is always on the individual. Take performance management - in many organizations, you’re evaluated pretty much solely on your own work, not necessarily on anyone else’s, but the reality is, many of us can’t do our work on our own and rely on other people. 

Not to mention, for many of us, the source of friction for projects or missed deadlines or changing priorities isn’t always us, but rather, the interpersonal dynamics that exist between people and teams that get in the way of aligning or achieving a shared objective.

At the end of the day, we all need the support and cooperation of others to get our jobs done, and others need our support and buy-in for their work too. So the question becomes, how do you build that connection and trust that the team needs in order for it to be effective in achieving its goals?

Managers Need to Focus on Intentionally building connection

Two of my personal favorite writers on topics related to teams are Ashley Goodall (Former Head of HR at Cisco and Deloitte) and Marcus Buckingham (Best Selling Author). In my conversation with Ashley earlier this year, Ashley talked about how culture mostly is experienced at the team level in an organization. 

And even though we may join a company because of its “company culture” what we actually experience of that cultural is primarily at that team level (ex: your pod, squad, business unit, org, etc) This is also why managers, in particular, play such a critical role in fostering that connection and cohesion - what an employee experiences (which directly impacts how they show up in their job) is often heavily influenced by the conditions and cohesion that a manager sets for the team. 

So the question then becomes, how does a manager or leader of a team foster that sense of connection for their team?

Activity You Can Use: The Team Joining Exercise

Borrowing from the work of Marcus Buckingham, one exercise I often recommend that anyone leading a team (inclusive of managers, leaders, individual contributors) comes from Buckingham’s most recent Best-Selling Book, Love+Work, Buckingham talks about a concept he calls “team joining.” (N.B. If you like the concept of Love+Work, you may also want to check out 9 Lies About Work) For anyone leading a team, this is a great exercise to use to start to build that sense of connection and trust that can help your team work more collaboratively together, as well giving people a chance to get more insight into the other people they might be working with. The exercise goes like this:

1. Bring everyone together

2. Give everyone a chance to reflect and write down their answers to these four questions

   1. What do you love doing?

   2. What are your unique strengths?

   3. Where do you genuinely need help and support?

   4. What can we rely on you for?

I’ve seen this exercise in action many times, as it’s one that I’ve done on teams I’ve led and also that I’ve recommended to others in my work today, and a number of interesting things happen when you do it.

1. You create space to get to know each other - These are all probably things that could come out over the course of getting to know a teammate or cross-functional peer, but it may not happen organically. With this exercise, you’re creating a container for it to happen.

2. You learn a lot about your teammates and peers - You gain some really important insights and information about your peers and teammates that you can use to work together more effectively that you may not have known or gotten on your own

3. You open a further conversation - This is where it gets interesting, in that you create an invitation for a broader discussion and conversation around “what do we do with this information?” - If I know that you need help in areas X, Y, and Z, what can I do about that? If I know I can rely on you for A, B, and C, how can I use that the next time something I need help with comes up? And if I know that you love doing 1,2, and 3, how can I team up with you to get you doing more of those things so you can make greater contributions toward the team. 

The tactical insights you get from doing this are super helpful to the day to day flow of how the team works together. But when done right, the strategic benefits are what pay dividends. What the exercise is really about, is how do we get our team into a mindset of collaborating together, leveraging each other’s strengths, and supporting each other with their areas of development. This won’t happen overnight, but as your team starts to incorporate this information they learn into how they show up and engage with one another (and you help reinforce it) over time you will start to see results.

As a manager or leader of a team, one of the best things you can do is to create conditions that enable your team to achieve a shared goal. Fostering connection and trust through small activities like this one is a small practice over time that can create the conditions for a collaborative, effective and engaged team.

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Moments on The Journey

A few weeks ago, I got invited to join the Inspired Money Podcast to share my thoughts on five trends related to the future of work with three other future of work experts. I’ve been on many podcasts and panels before and always appreciate these opportunities, but this one was special in one unique way. 

One of the other panelists on the podcast was Charlene Li. Charlene is a best-selling author, entrepreneur, consultant, keynote speaker and many other things, and is currently studying a lot at the intersection of the future of work and artificial intelligence. She’s been at the forefront of the discussion of technology and the future of work for multiple decades.

I first came across Charlene’s work almost 20 years ago when my Father booked her to be the keynote speaker at her conference. Back then, she was talking about how this thing called social media could be used to transform how companies communicate with their customers and employees, and how Facebook could actually be used to connect with customers in ways traditional marketing channels couldn’t. (I am dating myself, I know) 

I remember watching Charlene on stage and thinking to myself if that was something that i could do one day, to get up on stage and to share my ideas in ways that helped people improve or do something better,  especially knowing that back then (and still now) there are not many other people that look like us (Asian-American) who do this kind of work. Fast forward to today where through my job, I get to be on the virtual stage with someone that I looked up to and admired.

I am in now way suggesting that Charlene and I are on the same level, but it does make me reflect a bit on what has actually led me to the point where I can even conceive of this being a reality. For me, it was making time to find and develop ideas and my expertise, creating space to share it, and finding other people that wanted to learn in the same way. Many times, as an entrepreneur, you focus on the outcomes that you can measure. This podcast episode probably won’t lead to revenue, but it was a good reminder to me of how far I’ve come that showing up and being intentional about chasing a goal can often lead to progress and results.

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If you’re looking for some help for your learning and development, leadership development or professional development for this year, I’d love to work with you: Here is how I might be able to assist:

• Team Trainings & Professional Development:  Happy to facilitate training or professional development opportunity for your team & organization - common topics include: influence without authority, navigating change, hybrid working, and others.

• Consulting & Advisory Work - Are you looking to improve the ways of working of your team or organization or looking for guidance on remote/hybrid work? Let’s chat about how we can work together

• Leadership & Learning Programs:  Formal training and leadership development in your company, such as new manager or new leader training, or skill-based programs.

Feel free to contact me directly for more details!

Have a great week!

Al