Trust in Me: How to Build Trust in Collaborations
by Mala Rajpal
Absence of Trust is the first dysfunction outlined in the best-selling book — the Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni (2002). The author highlights that trust is crucial as a foundation. Only when trust exists are team members able to focus their attention fully on the task at hand, rather than being strategically political in the group. A “high level of trust” is also one of the key components for collaboration identified by the Economist Intelligence Unit. Trust is a good place to start in any relationship. But unlike personal relationships or even internal teams, work collaborations with external partners do not allow for a lot of time to establish trust. The equation gets further complicated when partners are geographically distant, or are from vastly different domains, with very different cultural contexts.
Trust in business reflects a complex interplay of factors, including integrity (honesty, ethics), competence (intelligence, capabilities), commitment (often supported by demonstrations of good faith), and perceptions (‘gut instincts’ and fears) according to a paper by the Economist Intelligence Unit. While trust is often defined in emotional or abstract terms, the ways to build trust and be trusted can be grounded in very practical actions.
Based on my own experiences working in partnerships across sectors, and the insights shared with me by a few senior contacts working in the social and private sectors on trust and partnerships, here are 6 ways to build trust in a collaboration or partnership.
1. Cultural context: understanding what matters
Going the extra mile to define cultural contexts and ways of working, ahead of commencing work, can go a long way to demonstrating commitment and averting the breakdown of a partnership. Here are two examples I’ve seen of cultural challenges encountered in partnerships that could have been avoided. Communication broke down when a Japanese organisation worked with an Indonesian one because one used only email and the other only WhatsApp. When a British company worked with an Indian one, they were frustrated when nothing moved for 10 days because of the Diwali Festival. The frustration of “not being responded to” or “work getting unnecessarily delayed” could have easily been avoided if there was an understanding and agreement on the modalities of working.
Modes of communication, response times, language to use, hierarchical structures, big celebrations, social norms are all seemingly small, but important things that can be agreed upon. An effort to understand the cultural context also adds empathy to the trust equation.
2. Agreeing on milestones and review process
Trying to make changes within education systems, or to sanitation habits or economic status, are complex problems that take time, and often many iterations of a solution to solve. Terminology complexity can add to this challenge — for example ‘long term’ in the corporate sector means 3–5 years, in the nonprofit context it’s 5–10 years and in the public sector it’s 10–20 years!
Before embarking on a partnership, all stakeholders need to sit at the table and in objective terms agree to the timeline and milestones. Define what you are hoping to achieve in 12 months, 3 years, 5 years. And don’t just stop at that. Go a step further and agree on the review process. While we all set out intending to succeed, the possibility of a failure or course correction should come as no shock and it should not be on any one partner to bear the complete responsibility. Agreeing upon the review process with each partner’s defined roles, is as important as agreeing on milestones.
3. Setting expectations
Unpleasant surprises and disappointments during the course of a partnership have a huge bearing on trust. They typically happen when there is a mismatch between expectations and reality. When I was working with XSEED Education partnering with schools in developing countries, expectations with the schools had to be set at the very beginning. Changing the way teaching-learning happens is a process that requires time (at least 9–12 months), commitment (teachers and the head of the institution need to be invested), as well as openness (mindset change from breaking old habits). With these in place, a radical change is possible in a child’s learning and confidence.
Social and behavioural changes are always hard and take time. Whether you are working to build low cost housing, providing clean drinking water, or establishing pro bono volunteering, it’s best for all stakeholders to state and set expectations with honesty. This will safeguard the relationship in the long run.
4. Maintaining objectivity
While friends and family are the people we most love and respect, it is undeniably harder to have difficult confrontational conversations with these people. There is just so much at stake. The ability to be objective, speak openly, and share concerns without the worry of a breakdown — key ingredients to successful partnerships — all require a certain sense of emotional detachment and focus on the task.
It might be ideal to avoid mixing personal and professional relationships in work collaborations. However, if there are friends involved in a collaboration, start by agreeing on some guidelines for appropriate behaviour before the collaboration kicks off full-scale. Otherwise harmony may end up taking precedence over constructive debate.
5. Leadership to be aligned
Bureaucracy is a nightmare that none of us want to deal with but most of us are familiar with! Most projects of any scale (with a few exceptions) have encountered issues with red-tape. At an event last month, I met a very interesting person. We chatted all afternoon and there were great opportunities for working together. We quickly exchanged emails and it was time to move to the next step. After that, I encountered deathly silence. Only a few days ago, I was told that the leadership did not think of this project as priority and hence the stalling.
When leadership is invested in moving things forward, it becomes a huge factor in ensuring success of the project. Even if the leaders or key decision makers of the organisations partnering are not the ones overseeing a project on a day to day basis, they need to sit face to face, agree to committing to the collaboration and pledge their support to keep things moving at pace. A quick handshake might be all it takes to avoid delays down the line.
6. Establishing intent and capabilities
High trust comes about when all partners are confident of each others’ intent and capability to deliver. It also contributes largely to the success of the project. Making a realistic internal assessment of your own intent and competencies, is a great first step.
Show your experience, make your past work do the talking, and allow for honest references to be established. As well as building trust, these aspects also help to establish respect and show the value that each partner brings to the relationship.
Collaboration is always complex, but it also allows us to solve complex sets of challenges. I hope these insights can help you establish trust early in the collaboration process in order to set your partnership up for success.
About the author:
Mala Rajpal is the Founder & CEO of Left Right. A marketing & business development professional with over a decade of experience across Singapore & India, Mala quit the private sector 3 years ago to focus on the social sector full-time. Passionate about making social good organisations more efficient & evolved, she wishes to help more organisations tell their stories better, spread their work far & wide, and talk to their stakeholders feeling confident about their present & future.
