On teams: building trust by communication

What is the secret to great teams, teams that accomplish difficult projects and go above and beyond the expectations of the company? It’s not how many MBAs you have, where they went to school, or even their years of experience. The highest performing teams are those that trust one another.

I have witnessed this in my own experience, but Google, with some of the richest data available and enough willingness to ask the the question, looked at their highest performing teams across a range of metrics and demographics. The result confirmed that the characteristics of each individual on the team was less important than the the team’s ability to be open and to trust one another. There is no I in team after all.

At Lincko, a company I cofounded only a few months ago, we believe one of the keys to building this trust in teams is in communication. It is fundamental to humans, fundamental to our relationships with one another.

Anyone who has gone through any type of marriage preparation, or has been married, knows that communication is emphasised above all other things. A couple’s ability to communicate with one another, openly and honestly, is key to the success of the long term relationship.

The fundamentals of human relationships are also at play in any team, in any business. When trust breaks down, we start to wonder — is the other person really committed to the project and to the team? Are they even reading the e-mails I send them? Why haven’t they replied to me yet? This is an even stronger factor when a team is not located in the same place or when they are located in another country. If someone hasn’t communicated a simple response, if we hear silence, or we can’t quite be sure of the tone of the e-mail, we all start to wonder.

Our communication tools often fail us, even if we get it right

E-mail and meetings are two of the biggest frustrations of the modern day workplace. They are, at their best, not usually exemplars of great communication. This is for a variety of reasons. From a purely practical perspective, we are often inundated with too many e-mails. At larger organizations, we may forget to copy everyone who needs the information, or alternately we may copy too many people such that the information is superfluous to those on the stream.

It’s easy to escalate in e-mail, which leads to tension on teams or between teams. At some point the manager is copied, or an individual on the team is called out publicly in an ever expanding e-mail chain. Trust has been destroyed. And that trust, is not easy to re-build.

Meetings usually have other pain points. If a meeting is poorly prepared for, if there is no agenda, the communication is usually ineffective. Meetings take a lot of time, which is in short supply for all of us. If you have a global team, it means late and early calls that take away from family and personal life. And ultimately, communication of action items from the meeting require follow ups.

Which leads to another way to show and demonstrate trust beyond communication. Trust is also earned through action. If we say we are going to do something, if we are assigned a task, we must complete it and be transparent about it. The ability to do what we say, and to be open when we need more help or more time is critical to a successful team (and a successful career). Continually demonstrating this ability, being able to repeat it in the case of a project, is what enables us and the team to accomplish truly great things.

See the big while it is still small (proverb from the Dao De Jing)

In my previous company, the best teams not only worked hard to accomplish their work, they were dedicated to helping each other. Because people were willing to help one another, and because they were shown trust to accomplish and figure out how to do things, they felt an even greater desire to make sure they did all they could to succeed.

It all began with communication. From big picture strategy to how each task we were doing was helping the team or helping the company, and also helping them in their career, communication of the big picture along with the small helps center people and also understand how they have an influence in their day to day activities. In management we are often worried about giving away too much information, that we must keep things close to our vest. But that’s not how you build a team. You need to be as honest as you can and inspire that team with your trust in them.

In any project, there is a similar dynamic of big and small. Each project has one or more large goals. But to get there, many small things must be accomplished. Tying the big to the small, seeing the big in the small, is key to the success of any project. This is a typical approach to projects and tasks — we start with big picture goals, and break them down into more manageable chunks. The more you make this process transparent, the more you communicate how everything ties together, the more likelihood your team trusts in both the big and the small, and in each other in completing those many small tasks to get to the big goal.

One of the reasons we built Lincko was to tie team communication and collaboration together with accomplishing a team’s goals and its projects. They are not really separate things — and we thought it really should be easier to take communication into the actual activity and tasks of the team, and to keep things transparent. So we built software which facilitates communication in a number of ways. Each project created in Lincko can have its own discussion groups, and you can also chat to individuals through our messaging platform. We created Notes and Files functionality in order to let teams share documents and longer forms of communication in a central place so it never gets lost and is always available to the whole team. And we built the ability to manage tasks in a team setting, and made it simple to turn Chat messages or information in Notes directly into a Task.

But whether you use our tool or not, or any collaboration tool, there are some key takeaways from the research Google did, and in how teams communicate and collaborate.

Begin with the small things

First, find ways to build trust in your team, and start with communication. There are better tools than e-mail to communicate information, and one of those ways is face-to-face. Think about the type of communication and the audience. Sometimes e-mail may be the right tool. But often a chat message, a phone call, or when possible, face-to-face discussions are all better suited than writing another e-mail.

Be brief in your communication as often as you can. When you have more information that needs to be shared, don’t hide it in an e-mail, find a place or a document where everyone who needs that information can access it. I promise you if you put that information in a long e-mail, few people will read it, and those that do will eventually misplace it.

In the United States, we like to engage in small talk. We ask even the cashier at the grocery store how they are doing as a sign of respect. This is not necessarily a common trait across the world. Many other cultures find this a little strange at first. But I have found it a good way to engage your team and your co-workers. Learn about them. Ask them how they are and be sincere when you do so. And encourage this across the team. We include discussions of team building in one of our chat groups we have here at Lincko.

Most importantly, spend time together as a team. Celebrate your accomplishments through team building — it could be a drink, having some cake in the office, or if you are a virtual team, scheduling a short meeting simply to acknowledge each other’s hard work and to recognize the contributions of the team members. Communicating your knowledge of someone’s accomplishments goes a long way to building trust and excitement in a team.

When it comes to taking action, make sure meetings have agendas, and that during the meeting someone takes notes. Make sure any action items have clear follow ups. You can use a variety of tools for this. One way is to put it in the team’s calendar in whatever e-mail or calendar application you are using. Of course at Lincko, we turn meeting notes into tasks using our software, and assign them with due dates to make sure not only that there are follow ups, but the actions are transparent to the whole team.

These are all simple things. A collaboration tool can certainly help, but it all starts by first recognizing that great teams are those that trust one another, and how important how we communicate is to building and maintaining that trust. How we communicate and how we are responsive to each other, directly impacts the trust the team has, and ultimately, the team’s success. So start thinking more about the communication your team has, how it can improve, and how you can build trust so you and your team can reach to ever greater heights.