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CHAPTER
10

REBUILDING TRUST WITHIN TEAMS

Trust or the lack of it affects how people work together. How do leaders rebuild trust within teams, even during times of change? How do we revitalize our relationships within teams when trust has been lost? What does it take to restore broken trust and heal betrayals with our coworkers? How do we restore trust within groups where people are unwilling or afraid to speak up, acknowledge the issues, difficult as they may be, and work toward viable solutions?

Your heart is pounding. Your stomach is in knots. The tension in the room is so thick, you need a chainsaw to cut it. The team must reach resolution on a key initiative. The boss is presenting his views on the topic, and everyone in the room is nodding in agreement. Yet twenty-five minutes ago at the water cooler, these same people were complaining that it was a “stupid idea,” that it would never work. The boss finishes his presentation and asks the group, “So what do you think?” Team members anxiously shift in their seats, look around the room, avoid eye contact with each other. Everyone is quiet. Meanwhile, the voice inside your head is screaming, “Will somebody please say something!” You begin speaking only to clamp shut again, succumbing to the other voice inside your head, which says, “Don’t do it. It’s not safe. What if the boss doesn’t like what you say and blows up again?” A similar message is being played in the heads of every individual around the table. “I’m not going to speak. You do it! I’m not taking any chances.”¹

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Have you experienced a team meeting like this? It is a far too common scenario. When there is insufficient trust within a team, where people do not feel safe to speak their mind for fear of retaliation, members do not share openly. Instead, they have private conversations around the water cooler with the few people they trust, or keep their views totally to themselves. Or ideas and concerns get buried deep under cynicism and resentment. As a result, team members don’t feel good about the team, they don’t trust one another, and the team’s effectiveness suffers.

THE IMPORTANCE OF TRUST TO TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

People come to teams with a range of expectations and emotions, from excitement and hope to doubt that the group will have the resources and support needed to get the job done to people who’ve had bad experiences who come in with cynicism. These expectations and emotions often concern how safe we expect the team to be, and reflect our previous experiences, positive and negative. We wonder if we can trust team members’ intentions, if we can trust the organization to support the effort with which the team is charted.

Perhaps you have had a positive team experience: members treated one another with dignity and respect, and people shared information and views with one another openly, acknowledging what each had to offer. Your team may have had a strong foundation of trust that carried it through the challenging times. Team members felt good about each other and what they had accomplished.

Perhaps your team experience was one in which people were not treated with dignity and respect. Perhaps people did not follow through on their commitments, failed to complete team assignments, or jockeyed for position to make themselves look good. Perhaps members just stopped showing up for meetings, withdrawing their participation without a word. You may have experienced having your ideas put down before you were able to express them fully. You may have felt the pain of no trust and the loss of any hope that it could be built.

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Trust in relationships is something for which we all yearn. It is a fundamental human need. Because teams are constituted on relationships, it comes as no surprise that team effectiveness largely stands on a foundation of trust. Trust is the glue that binds team members together. It helps foster a sense of belonging and influences members’ willingness to communicate openly, commit to the team’s goals, take risks, and support one another.

Many leaders realize that teams can be effective in helping organizations meet their objectives and adapt to change, and teams are thus widely used in organizations today. They are not always successful, however. Often a lack of trust prevents teams from developing to their fullest and most effective extent.

Being a member of a team represents a risk for some people. Some may have had no prior experience of being a member of a team or of being on a team like the one they have been asked to join. Worse, they may have had a negative team experience. In this chapter, we will explore how the three types of transactional trust can be used to strengthen existing trust and rebuild trust after betrayal. We’ll look at a sampling of the behaviors related to each form of transactional trust to illustrate how they are applied and practiced in teams.

CONTRACTUAL TRUST WITHIN TEAMS

Contractual trust is where the business of relationships starts; this is particularly true within teams.

Manage Expectations and Establish Boundaries

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“What do my coworkers expect of me? Can I meet those expectations? Can I do my part as a team member? Will I be accepted?” At the onset and throughout the time of a team’s work together, members have a strong need to know what is expected of them and what they may expect in return. Members often have many questions on their minds regarding what is acceptable behavior: Who is expected to do what? How are the tasks divided, roles established? How are decisions made? Will I have access to information? Are agendas known, or are they hidden? How will meetings be facilitated? Is it okay to miss a meeting occasionally to handle other obligations? How late is late to a meeting? Can I renegotiate project deadlines? What is taboo here? Is it okay to say, “I don’t know”? How will the team work together?

Contractual trust is the starting point for trust building in teams; if the team hasn’t established contractual trust, it cannot move forward. Team members don’t clarify and agree on roles and responsibilities, leading one person to think that he or she is doing the expected job, whereas others see it differently. People are not forthcoming about their needs, leading to hidden agendas and “workarounds.” Agreements are “blown off,” accompanied by excuses. Team behavior in general is inconsistent.

The team’s purpose defines the reason for the team’s existence; expectations define the objectives and scope of work for members. Team boundaries define roles and responsibilities. Therefore, understanding expectations and boundaries is crucial to the foundation of trust within that team.

When trust is high, team members feel they are “in the know.” They have discussed their expectations and achieve agreement and alignment around them. With this understanding, people then have an opportunity not only to achieve their goals but also to perform at a high level.

When expectations are not clear, team members may feel confused, anxious, and vulnerable. When people learn what is expected of them through hearing what they did wrong, their trust breaks down. When the purpose of the team has not been clearly established, team members have difficulty being aligned toward the same objectives and may in fact operate at cross-purposes with each other.

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It is important to create alignment so that team members can rally behind the objectives and goals. The following practices work well:

• Quarterly planning sessions give members a clear idea of the direction in which they need to head.
• Monthly progress reviews allow people to take stock of their accomplishments and the challenges to be overcome.
• Daily ten-minute stand-up meetings allow people to manage their day-to-day work, announce intentions, identify needs, and make requests of each other.

These can be conducted in person or, in the case of virtual or geographically dispersed teams, online using community-building tools.

Keep Agreements

Keeping agreements means that team members are willing to be accountable for their actions. When members honor their agreements, large or small, it strengthens trust within the team.

Working agreements make explicit how team members would like to work together. Team members set out a contract regarding how they will behave. Many groups have ground rules or team charters that govern team member behavior both at meetings and in other settings. These working agreements help create an environment of predictability and trust within the team. As is true of any agreement, their power comes alive when the words are taken off the pages and put into practice—when they are lived on a daily basis.

Team members create contractual trust when they keep their agreements or renegotiate broken agreements, walk their talk, show up for meetings and complete their assignments on time and keep their commitments and promises.

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Encourage Mutually Serving Intentions

When team members encourage mutually serving intentions rather than operate with hidden agendas, they jointly support each other in being successful. They take the time to discuss and address their needs. There are no hidden agendas. As a result, trust is nurtured.

Unfortunately, hidden agendas are often a part of a team’s life. Individuals do not fully disclose their interests and needs and then work to meet them covertly, or team members may withhold information, thinking that this self-serving action will help them maintain power and look like experts as they position themselves for promotion.

Hidden agendas break down trust and lead to betrayal, but they arise only when there is insufficient trust in the first place. In an environment of trust, people can talk openly about their expectations, intentions, hopes, and fears. They may even enlist group members to help them. Group members feel free to say no without fear that some other member will try to circumvent their decisions.

The top management team of a small hospital system was having difficulty operating effectively as a team. The president was aware that there was a low level of trust within the team, but he did not know why.

In our work with this team, we learned that the president’s relationship with the CFO carried a hidden agenda that compromised the level of trust within the team and in him. The CFO was highly competent, but she was a tyrant in the way she treated her coworkers. She would verbally attack her colleagues on issues during team meetings, rather than speak to them constructively in private. She was condescending and often abrasive. The other team members were unwilling to confront her for fear of retaliation. They were dismayed that the president allowed this behavior to continue.

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Upon further investigation, we discovered the president’s hidden agenda. He used the CFO to do his “dirty work” for him. The president did not want to come across as the bad guy in delivering the tough messages to his team. So he had the CFO confront members with his issues. Over time, the team all but shut down, information flow decreased, and trust “dropped through the floor.” The president lost all trust and credibility in the eyes of his key people. Eventually he was asked to resign. The CFO left a short time after.

The president’s self-serving actions destroyed contractual trust within the team. We helped this team heal and move on. They drew on the Seven Steps for Healing as a framework to guide honest, constructive discussions. Team members acknowledged what happened and expressed their feelings, reframed their experiences, and took responsibility for their parts. Transactional trust helped them link trust-building behaviors to their business strategy. During the following two years, the team used the Reina Trust & Betrayal Model to monitor and evaluate its progress and to guide members’ behavior. What they experienced was transformative.

COMMUNICATION TRUST WITHIN TEAMS

Team members need to communicate openly with one another. They need to ask questions, honestly say what is on their minds, challenge assumptions, raise issues, or simply say they don’t understand and ask for help. Only in a trusting environment will people feel free to relate in this way.

Share Information

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When a team member withholds information, that behavior is perceived as self-serving, and the person’s trustworthiness and commitment to the team is called into question. Performance and the trust among team members suffer. When team members share information, it is powerful. It contributes to the individual and shared learning. The following example highlights the power of sharing information; this is a supervisor’s observation of the way members from two teams shared insights from an intensive training program.

“One of the teams openly shared the information they were learning in class. In fact, the members scheduled periodic feedback sessions with their teammates who were not attending the classes, to share what they learned. They became coaches for each other back on the job. As a result, the free exchange enhanced the cohesiveness, trust, and performance of the entire team.”

“The other team tried to enhance performance through competition. They viewed information as power, so instead of sharing information, they withheld it. Doors closed (literally), and people shut down. These behaviors led to a secretive and “cutthroat” working environment. The level of trust and performance within this team declined.”

“The team that shared information did more than develop communication trust. Team members kept their agreements and built contractual trust in coaching each other; further, this coaching enhanced the skills of each team member and developed their competence trust in one another. Having built all three types of transactional trust, this team outperformed the one that withheld information.”

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Open communication was desperately needed to turn the other team around. We engaged the group in the Seven Steps for Healing. Once members observed and acknowledged the patterns that had broken trust, we helped them reframe the experience and develop an action plan to take responsibility. As a result, team members began to open up and share pertinent job information and give constructive feedback on each other’s performance. We facilitated one-on-one communication sessions over the next month (see the application exercise at the end of Chapter 3). Each team member had a chance to talk about his or her working relationship with every other group member. Members revealed what they appreciated about each other and what they felt was not working. They brainstormed how to work differently and agreed on ground rules for everyone’s behavior. They ended their sessions by each summarizing expectations for the others. Over the next year, the group progressed from being a low-trust to a high-trust team, and its performance excelled.

Tell the Truth

Telling the truth, the whole truth, is often frightening. We may question how it will be received and understood. We wonder how people will react. When we lean into our fears and take a risk by telling the truth, we honor our own voice, demonstrate respect for others, and strengthen our trust.

Although there may be a risk in being honest, there is a greater risk in being dishonest. If we speak the unvarnished truth, we may risk looking bad in the eyes of our employees or our teammates. However, if we fail to tell the truth, we risk losing our credibility. We betray ourselves and the spirit of teamwork.

Effective leaders model the behavior they expect from others. If we want truth telling, we must first tell the truth. If we want our people to open up, we must do so ourselves. We don’t need to be “bleeding hearts,” but we can appropriately disclose our thoughts and concerns about changes in the business environment. When we do so, it shows that we are human and do not have any hidden agendas.

The vignette at the start of this chapter illustrates what happens when team members are not forthright and not able to tell the truth. Collusion, a form of betrayal, takes place. The assumption underlying collusion is that team members cannot deal with openness or handle the truth. As a result, the truth goes underground, and trust in relationships plummet.

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The first step to dealing constructively with collusion is to acknowledge what is happening within the group, name “the elephant in the living room,” so to speak. Once individual team members have been made aware of the dynamic, they have a responsibility to themselves and others to raise the issues. They may say to their teammates, “I think there are some issues that we have not explored openly. I would like to suggest we discuss them.” For a team that has a habit of colluding, it is essential to bring issues to the surface in order to break this pattern of denial. Trust has a chance to develop only when we are willing to uncover the truth and speak about it unflinchingly.

When team members do not tell the truth, they betray the very principle of teamwork. This betrayal affects all three types of transactional trust. It is extremely difficult to manage expectations and follow through on agreements. When you can’t count on what others say, you are reluctant to commit anything to them. Furthermore, when people are not honest, others do not trust their judgment or involve them in planning or decision making. In the end, everyone loses, and team performance suffers.

Admit Mistakes

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In high-trust teams, team members take responsibility for their mistakes. These teams have regular checkpoints to monitor their progress. Leaders set the tone for the team by providing safe opportunities for people to admit mistakes. They work with their employees to correct their mistakes and to learn from them. Leaders openly surface and deal with issues in constructive ways. Within such a safe environment, employees are more willing to take risks, be creative and innovative; and they are acknowledged and rewarded accordingly.

Maintain Confidentiality

When team members share information in confidence, they assume it will not be shared with others. We have an obligation to uphold that agreement. Doing so builds trust; failing to do so breaks trust and results in a great deal of pain and disappointment for all involved. There is no middle ground. A person’s ability to maintain confidentiality affects the degree to which others will tell him or her the truth and share information.

Rhonda was a member of a self-managed team of a production plant. She was a dedicated worker, but liked to talk—a lot! The team members made some ground rules regarding how they wanted to operate. One of the agreements concerned confidentiality: “What gets talked about in team meetings is team business and stays in the room.” Rhonda attended a skills training the plant was sponsoring. During one of the breaks, she inadvertently shared some of the internal dynamics regarding a few of the team members. Word got back to the team through the grapevine that she was disclosing internal team business to the rest of the company. By the time the information got back, it was distorted. Team members were livid! Unfortunately, Rhonda was out sick for two days after the training. Meanwhile, the story and the tension within the team escalated. When Rhonda returned to work, she found out what had happened. Instead of calling the team together to discuss the facts, she was terrified and did nothing. None of her teammates brought the issue to her either. The team’s trust in Rhonda diminished. She was perceived as having breached the team’s confidentiality. Her team members did not confront her directly and were passive-aggressive in their interactions with her. They shunned her, refusing to share with her information she needed to do her job. She was cut off socially from the group. This went on for months. The interpersonal dynamics turned sour. Morale fell, and soon the group’s performance suffered as well.

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This illustrates the pain that results from a breach of confidence. Rhonda let the team and herself down. As can be expected, the team was angry and hurt. However, the other members’ treatment of Rhonda was as inappropriate as her breach of confidence. Rather than confront Rhonda constructively, the team chose to shun her, shut her out, and betray her. Just as trust begets trust, distrust begets distrust.

However, in the midst of betrayal there is opportunity, if we are willing to see it. “These acts of betrayal can be catalysts for change; they can actually increase trust,” a plant manager pointed out. “It takes courage and the responsibility of all parties to take ownership for their roles in these circumstances.”

Speak with Good Purpose

“When I first started working here, gossip was rampant!” Georgia shared with the new team member. “It used to be so bad, I didn’t want to get up and come into work in the morning. People used to talk behind one another’s back, criticizing them for the very mistakes they themselves were making!

“Since Mr. Reynolds took over as supervisor two years ago, he put an end to the backstabbing. He established regular meetings where we would all identify and hash through the issues. We developed working agreements to guide our process. At the top of the list was ‘Speak directly to the person you have an issue or concern with!’ Now that is one of our team’s key guiding principles.”

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To speak with good purpose means that we must have a positive attitude, understand what the team is seeking to accomplish, and think highly of our fellow team members. Without these, we won’t be able to contribute much to the success of the team. If we don’t speak with good purpose, we will undermine and distract our team from its work.

When team members speak with good purpose, they speak directly to one another regarding their concerns or issues, rather than to everyone else. They talk constructively and affirmatively and stand up for each other. Genuine support and praise for one another goes a long way toward creating a trusting environment that produces results. By supporting one another and receiving support in return, team members build an interdependence based on mutual trust.² Further, team members recognize each other’s efforts and acknowledge the contributions they make to one another and the organization. They work harder, individually and collectively, to achieve the team’s objectives and to serve their organization.

Teamwork is complex, and relationships are challenging. There are times when team members annoy, anger, or perhaps disappoint one another. If we contribute to these feelings in others, we hope they will bring them directly to our attention so that we can take an active role in resolving them. Sadly, that is not always the case.

Some people choose to voice their frustrations by gossiping and backbiting. These are surefire ways to destroy trust in a team. Through our experience with hundreds of teams and research using our trust-measuring instruments, we have found gossip to be the number one factor that destroys communication trust in work teams. People use these indirect tactics for a variety of reasons. One individual may be uncomfortable confronting another or may feel a need to put another down in order to raise his or her own standing. Yes, it is necessary to give voice to our frustrations. However, we have an obligation to the relationship with our team members to speak directly to the individuals involved. As one food service manager lamented, “I think people don’t want to talk to me about the issue because they feel I don’t want to hear it.” If team members have things to say about an issue, they owe it to themselves and the team to bring it to the surface so that it can be discussed openly. When team members become aware of gossip and backbiting, they have a responsibility to stop it. When they don’t, they betray themselves and their colleagues.

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COMPETENCE TRUST WITHIN TEAMS

Competence trust is an absolute requirement for work to get done effectively in teams. Broadly speaking, it is the ability to do what needs to be done. Narrowly speaking, it means being able to rely on someone to complete a specific task.

Acknowledge People’s Skills and Abilities

People generally enter teams wanting to make a contribution, but they may be concerned about their ability to do so. They may wonder, “Will I be able to learn the new skills required of me so that I don’t let down my team or my boss?” These are very real concerns and can cause much anxiety. Worse, fear and self-distrust feed on each other, and left unchecked, they can create a self-fulfilling prophecy. The very thing we fear, we create or bring upon ourselves. When we focus on our fear, we lose sight of our skills and abilities and lose sight of our trust in ourselves. We betray ourselves.

Team members can help one another deal with these anxieties. With marketplace demands and technological advancements ever on the increase, it is not unusual for a team’s work to require a skill set or knowledge base that the team does not currently possess. However, a leader or team members may recognize the capability of one of their own to acquire it. When others see you as competent and they trust in your basic ability, their trust can help you trust in your own ability to learn new skills.

When people feel that their competence is trusted and their work is appreciated, they get excited about what they are doing and the people with whom they are doing it. They feel able to take risks and explore new arenas. The opportunity to contribute and make a difference is energizing to people.

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Bill was scared to death. His stomach was in knots, his palms were sweating, and his breathing was shallow and fast. He had never given a public presentation, and in thirty minutes he would be speaking to sixty-five managers on behalf of his team. He did not want to let the other members down. The team had been working on this project for six months, and this presentation was key to getting approval on the project funding.

The team leader, Sarah, offered reassurance. “You are respected by the managers of this organization, and I know you will do a wonderful job. Relax and enjoy yourself.” Well, Bill did not relax until he was halfway through his presentation, and he did not enjoy himself until it was over, but he did a wonderful job, and the presentation was well received. The team won the approval!

Bill’s team members saw an ability he had to connect with people and earn their respect, a gift he was not aware of himself. The trust his team members had in him enabled him to step into his discomfort zone, giving him an opportunity to develop new abilities and discover new ways of seeing himself.

Unfortunately, team members don’t always recognize each others’ skills and abilities. There are times when they don’t see one another as the whole people that they are. Their narrow perceptions limit the potential of their teammates as individuals and the team as a whole. When team members feel discounted or experience other members’ being discounted, they need to communicate their concerns. When people discount one another, their comments say more about them than about the person they are attacking and are often the result of these individuals’ own insecurity, fear, lack of information, or need to control.

In such situations, it is important to facilitate an open dialogue to clear the air. If members consistently feel discounted, they need to feel safe enough to express their frustrations and vent their concerns without being further discounted. The bully needs to be confronted head-on; consequences for his behavior need to be spelled out unequivocally, and discipline needs to be enforced. When team members are encouraged, they will start speaking up, taking a stand. As they experience some success, their confidence and competence in handling these situations will grow, thereby freeing up their energy for more productive purposes.

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Involve Others and Seek Their Input

In high-trust teams, members involve one another and seek their input in the team’s day-to-day work. They share information, exchange ideas, and brainstorm solutions. By actively involving one another in their processes, they support one another’s goals and contribute to the total performance of the team. This support builds confidence and competence trust within each individual and the team as a whole.

In low-trust teams, members do not readily involve others or seek their input on decisions. People operate in “silos,” with little to no collaboration. Competence trust is constricted.

One indication of a low-trust team is the “not invented here” (NIH) syndrome. When this syndrome is present, team members ignore or discount others’ ideas or suggestions simply because they didn’t think of them first. Team members do not benefit from collective learning when they do not value each other’s input. Team and overall organizational performance suffer when people don’t leverage each other’s competence. Furthermore, when leaders don’t value the contributions of their team members, they discount their employees and discredit themselves.

The manager asked the team to develop procedures for inspecting parts on the production line. Rallying to his request, the team worked hard for almost five weeks to develop the procedures. The team felt proud of what it had accomplished. At the end of the five weeks, the supervisor ignored the team’s work and instituted his own procedures without any explanation to his team. Team members felt discouraged and defeated: “Why should we work to give him what he asks for? He’ll simply ignore it anyway!”

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The supervisor initially sought the input of his team, yet his actions did not respect the members’ work or the value of their contribution. He demonstrated poor judgment and a lack of competence trust in them. Giving people an opportunity to contribute, whetting their appetites and firing their enthusiasm and then dashing their spirits, dishonored the relationship. It wasted people’s time and energy and destroyed their trust in him as their leader.

We can learn powerful lessons from painful experiences like this one of what not to do. In contrast, there are many leaders who are trying to do the right thing. They encourage their employees to share information, exchange ideas, and brainstorm solutions. These leaders actively involve their employees in decision making processes, so they are able to support one another’s goals and contribute to the total performance of the team. This support builds confidence and competence trust within each team member and the team as a whole.

Help People Learn Skills

If, in contrast, team members don’t feel acknowledged for the skills, knowledge, and experience they bring, they stop giving their utmost to that organization. They may go through the motions, but internally they shut down and resign themselves to giving as little as possible. After a prolonged time, when members don’t feel valued for the capabilities they bring to the team, they begin to question their own competence. Their willingness to learn and take risks falters. Their capacity for trust in themselves decreases.

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To retain talented employees who are engaged and satisfied, effective leaders know that they need to acknowledge their employees’ contributions and challenge these individuals’ to develop their capabilities. To build the capacity of their people, leaders need to push employees into their “discomfort zones,” where most powerful learning takes place. Further, leaders need to support their employees in their discomfort. In doing so, they help employees acquire yet more knowledge and learn to trust more in themselves. In turn, the leader demonstrates that he or she is safe to trust.

TRUST: THE MOST CRITICAL TEAM INGREDIENT

Trust is the foundation to team effectiveness. Without it, a team will not do more than go through the motions of teamwork. Transactional trust anchors a team in its purpose and creates shared responsibility and accountability. Contractual trust sets the tone and direction for team functioning; it establishes the playing field and the rules for engagement. Communication trust establishes information flow and how people will talk with one another. Competence trust allows teams to leverage and further develop skills, abilities, and knowledge.

Can teams have one type of trust and not another? Yes, but not for long. We have learned through our trust-measuring instruments that it is possible for a team to have a high level of one type of trust and a low level of another at some points in its functioning. However, if low levels of trust are not rebuilt, the unresolved betrayal will erode the pockets of high trust.

High-trust teams strive to be aware of their behaviors. They link trust-building behaviors to their strategy. Trust building is an integrated part of their work. High-trust teams monitor themselves and practice the seven steps to address disappointments when they occur. And they reap the rewards of their awareness and behavioral choices: joy, satisfaction, growth, results, and effective relationships.

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TRUST BUILDING IN ACTION

Reflecting on Your Experience

Individually reflect on the following questions and be prepared to discuss your insights and observations with your teammates.

1. Think of a team in which the trust among team members was high. How did that high level of trust affect the effectiveness of the team? In what ways did the high level of trust cause members to be more productive?
2. Think of a team where trust was low, perhaps as a result of having experienced betrayal. What was the impact of this low trust on the team’s effectiveness? How did the low trust reduce the team’s productivity?
3. Did members of the low-trust team have explicit agreements? Were they upheld? Were there areas where the team needed agreements but was unable to negotiate or commit to them?
4. How was the high-trust team able to share information? How did that sharing of information contribute to the team’s effectiveness? What happened to team members when they made a mistake, whether they admitted it or not?
5. Did the low-trust team identify and systematically use the competence of its members? If not, what was the effect on team cooperation? Was any attention given to improving the capabilities of team members?

Application Exercise

Assess the Team’s Transactional Trust. Use the transactional trust template on the next page to assess the level of trust within your team and to get each team member’s perspective on how well the team is practicing the behaviors that contribute to each type of trust. Suggested steps are as follows:

1. Draw a circle in the center of a piece of flipchart paper and label it “Our Team’s Transactional Trust.” Then draw three branches extending from the center point of the circle, and label each with one of the three types of transactional trust: “Contractual Trust,” “Communication Trust,” and “Competence Trust,” as in the figure here.
   
   
2. 178Give each team member three colored dots and have all team members place their dots on each vector of the transactional trust template according to the degree to which they perceive the team practicing the specific behaviors that contribute to contractual, communication, and competence trust. Team members rate the level of trust on a scale from 1 to 5 (1 is low, 5 high).
3. Have the team step back and take a look after everyone has had a chance to rate the team’s level of trust. Ask the team, “What story does it tell us? Where are we strong? Where are there opportunities for improvement?” Have the team discuss the behaviors that are the weakest under each type of trust and discuss ways to strengthen these behaviors.

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Please note: This is a quick snapshot of team members’ perceptions of the level of trust in your team. It does not by any means replace such valid and reliable instruments as the Reina Team Trust Scale, an online research-based assessment survey that measures the quantitative and qualitative levels of trust within teams.

Trust Note

Team members have a strong need to be able to communicate openly with one another. They need to be able to ask questions, honestly say what is on their minds, challenge assumptions, raise issues, or simply say they don’t understand something and ask for help. Only in a trusting environment will people feel free to relate to one another in this way.