Trust - The Secret Ingredient of High Performance Teams

Paragliding in Bir Biling

In the summer of 2011, I had a chance to participate in a theater workshop conducted by Bangalore Little Theater. The program called SPOT (Summer Production On Theater) is a 3 months training program on different aspects of theater and culminates in a publicly staged production by the participants. This is one of the finest training programs I have ever attended and is open to theater novices (like me), amateurs and professionals alike. If you live in Bangalore, you ought to try it out.

Even though it happened years ago, my SPOT experience is etched clearly in my memory for various reasons. For one, I didn't know that there is so much method to acting. If not for SPOT, I would probably have never known what Constantin Stanislavsky pioneered as Method Acting which was later popularized in the West by Lee Strasberg. I who was used to buying books on Computer Science, for the first time, bought (about half a dozen) books on acting written by these stalwarts and read them cover to cover. It was (still is) an enriching experience to know the vast body of knowledge that exists in any field of human endeavor.

And then there was voice training. Being able to deliver your lines in way that even people sitting in the last row of an auditorium with no mikes and poor acoustics can hear you is no mean feat.

Every weekend session used to have some interesting and new exercises, each designed with specific intent.

The Free Fall

In this, taking turns, each participant will climb a height of approximately 8 feet and stand facing away from the team. The team members (who are standing at ground level) form 2 rows facing each other, with their hands outstretched and clasping the arms of the person opposite them. The idea is to provide a safety net through their hands for the person who is standing up. On the count of three, the person on top has to let go off and fall behind freely, trusting that the team will not let him down. Literally. It may sound easy but you have to do it to learn -

How hard it is to trust.

The moment you trust and let go and fall freely to land safely in the hands of your team, that moment something beautiful happens -

You get connected to them through an invisible bond.

The Obstacle Course

In this exercise you have to negotiate through an obstacle course. And the catch is, it's extremely risky. One wrong step could get you couple of fractures and cuts. And you have to do it blindfolded. No I'm not kidding. But you have one help -

Your buddy.

The buddy is not blindfolded and can give you voice instructions on what to do at each step. You can not survive this exercise in one piece if you can't trust your buddy and follow the instruction to the last letter. The beautiful part of this exercise is that only after you complete the exercise, you remove the blindfold and see, for the first time, what the obstacle course looks like and what your buddy has got you through safely. The gush of warmth that you feel for your buddy when the blindfold is lifted is what is called trust.

Then the next participant walks in blindfolded and you become her buddy now. And there is lesson to be learned even here. It is one thing to be blindfolded and listen to somebody's instructions but it's a totally different thing to keep your eyes open and give instructions knowing fully well that one mistake on your part can badly injure the person who is trusting you.  This is more difficult than the former.

Unless you trust yourself, you can't do this.

That brings me to the title of the post. What makes a team great is not experience, not competency, not communication, not processes, not anything else.

The foundation of a great team is TRUST.

Take this foundation away and no matter what you put will not stand long enough. The importance of trust in teams and organizations can simply not be overstated. In the remainder of this post I'm going to share some pointers on trust that I have gathered through observation, experience and reflection with the hope that you find it useful.

• Think of every action (commission or omission) as something which will either increase trust levels or deplete it. Focus on the ones which increase trust.

• When you do something which breaks trust, the opposite person can automatically sense it even though your actual action might not be known to the person at that time.

• How much you trust a person can be known easily by knowing how much vulnerable you are willing to be with that person.

• How much a person trusts you can be known by knowing how much gap exists between what you say and what you actually do.

• The greatest of the leaders are passionately preoccupied with the question - How do I increase trust levels ? The mediocre ones ask - Why should I ? The lowest (actually ignorant) ones do things which deplete trust and like to think that it doesn't matter.

• Tolerating untrustworthy people and a culture of distrust is like tolerating a disease. The only right thing to do here is use all your might to eliminate it.

• Don't miss a chance to create trust. Smallest of the actions go a long way in creating long lasting relationships.

• When you break trust take responsibility and do what you can to restore it. Pretending nothing happened doesn't help. On the flip-side allow others to restore trust when you see a sincere attempt on their part. A state of no trust is not beneficial to either party.

• Do not underestimate the potency of a network of trust. Magic and miracles are commonplace in teams where high levels of trust exists.

• Remember trust (or the lack of it) is one of the greatest motivators of human action. A person whose trust is vindicated and one whose trust is broken, will both do things which they wouldn't in the normal course. It's a sword which cuts both ways. Trust is not to be messed with.

I will close by saying that, in any situation, if there is only one thing that you can focus on to create breakthroughs, try working on trust levels taking concrete actions to improve it.

As always, I would love to hears your thoughts, experiences and views.

BTW if you want to know how my play went, here is a clipping and a press report.

PS. Originally published on August 19, 2016 on LinkedIn.