Until today the word "trust" has only appeared in the title of one of the nearly 50 blog posts I have posted. But it shows up regularly in the contents of many more posts. If you want to find out for yourself, go to the gray area at the bottom of any page on this web site and use the search box.
Effective teamwork is all about trust. And this is especially important yet challenging now that we have so many ad hoc and functional teams which are sometimes set up without clearly defined leadership and roles or even goals. Under such circumstances it is easy for people to distrust others, often feeling in competition for credit for achievements and worrying that they may have blame ascribed to them for failures.
In a very interesting TED Talk, business school professor Amy Edmondson studies "teaming," where people come together quickly (and often temporarily) to solve new, urgent or unusual problems. She recalls stories of extreme teamwork on the fly, such as the incredible rescue of 33 miners trapped half a mile underground in Chile in 2010, Edmondson shares the elements needed to turn a group of strangers into a quick-thinking team that can nimbly respond to challenges. Click here.
In another TED Talk, Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei gives a crash course in trust: how to build it, maintain it and rebuild it -- something she worked on during a recent stint at Uber. "If we can learn to trust one another more, we can have unprecedented human progress," Frei says. Click here.
As we strive for quick wins and maximized achievements, let's not forget that spending some time at the beginning to build trust can avoid a lot of inefficiency which can result when we haven't built a trusting foundation with those with whom we must work. People-centered team leaders play a vital role here.
