Team trust is about challenging each other, building on others' ideas, clarifying disagreements, finding the best solutions. You kind of know when trust exists in a team, and you know (from the sidebar conversations and after-the-meeting discussions) when it doesn't. But how do you develop trust in a team ?I ran an interesting experiment with a team in a manufacturing organization. 7 Thai professionals worked together to solve a cross-functional issue, by using the Action Learning principles of asking questions to deeply understand the issue before to come up with solutions. The team worked each time for nearly 3 hours, for 4 sessions each time with 2 weeks in between. Only asking questions. And listening to each other. And building on ideas. Before the first session, and after the last, I measured the level of "team psychological safety" (look up Amy Edmondson from Harvard University for more on this topic). Team psychological safety is similar to team trust, "a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking". Research has shown that this positively impacts how a team learns and performs.
The difference before and after was significant. There was a 20% positive jump in two areas that team psychological safety looks at: appreciation for each others' competencies and skills, and the absence of negative impact of making a mistake. This was after only 4 sessions. And in addition to the assessment, it was confirmed through a debriefing session with the team members. Definitely a solid foundation on which to continue to build trust.
Trust does not happen over night. But it can be accelerated by leaving your team to work together, and sticking to the Action Learning principles. And you can actually measure the change in trust levels.
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