On the Job by Anita Bruzzese Why Teams Dont Trust One Another -- and How to Fix It

On the Job by Anita Bruzzese Why Teams Don't Trust One Another -- and How to Fix It Trust is the glue of life.Its the most essential ingredient in effective communication. Its the foundational principle that holds all relationships.Stephen Covey In an election year, the issue of trust is front and center as candidates at the local, state and national level argue who is the most trustworthy. Trust also is becoming a bigger deal in companies, especially ascross-functional teamsstrive to develop a cohesive strategy to drive innovation. Unfortunately, leaders are discovering that no matter how talented a team may be, innovative ideas may flounder and productivity may drop ifteam members lack trust in one another. This lack of trust can be the result of several different factors. For example, science shows that human beings often make snap judgments about people they meet for the first time, butresearchshows that our own intuition can be wrong when judging those we dont know well. First impressions are not always the best way to judge a person and can prove to be inaccurate, experts say. Further, some employees may have had poor experiences working on cross-functional teams in the past, further eroding their willingness to trust such teams again. Additional obstacles to establishing trust include old-fashioned turf battles, poor communications and anunwillingness to changehow work gets done. This all points to the fact that is can be very challenging for leaders toinstill trustamong cross-functional team members. A recentstudyfound that nearly 75% of cross-functional teams are dysfunctional. The reason why most cross-functional teams fail is because silos tend to perpetuate themselves: for example, engineers dont work well with designers, and so on, saysBehnam Tabriziof Stanford Universitys Department of Management Science and Engineering. Still, even teams who are familiar with one another can have trust issues, which is why establishing trust is the No. 1 challenge for leaders, says Thomas Barta, a former McKinsey partner and leadership expert. He explains that managers must serve as integrators for teams, helping members better communicate andunderstand one another. Think about how trust is established its always about your credibility and knowledge, Barta says. Most leaders are good at putting that on the table, but then they need to look at the second component of trust: intimacy. Barta explains that when employees from different functions get together, it can lead to some strong differences of opinion and leaders need to help workers get past those defensive positions and instead learn about one another. Trust and intimacy come about by building a relationship with someone finding out who they are and what theyre about, he says. Creating a joint vision At Halogen Software, at least a handful of cross-functional working groups are in play at one time, created and disbanded as needed, says Dominique Jones, chief people officer. I think one of the lessons we learned is that in the first meeting everyone wants to jump in and fix whatever it is in five minutes. But its best if they take an hour or so just to understand one another to know the background of those in the room, she says. Barta says the importance of the manager in helping teams mesh is brought home through research(read more here)