Fear vs Trust: team game for building cohesion

This is a game you can play with teams to explore the vagaries of psychological safety in work settings. It corresponds to the foundational level of the Lencioni Pyramid of High Performing Teams.

Playing this game with a group tends to elicit recognition of how easily team trust can be weakened, and also forces people to think creatively about trust-building actions they can take on the daily in any given setting. Playing silly games together is inherently relationship-building so worth a jag anyway.

As a reminder, this is not for the adorable-kitten-poster-virtue of trust in and of itself, not that that there’s anything wrong with that, but because of the crucial role psychological safety has in high performance. Any team hoping to get to intergalactic reaches of achievement will need to invest in a foundation of mutual trust.

Instructions:

Divide in 2 groups, Team Trust and Team Fear. Set aside one person or group of people to play the Jury.

1. Team Trust & Team Fear brainstorm separately (using paper & pens) for 5 minutes or so to assemble an arsenal of as many Trust-Building or Fear-Building moves that someone could do in a team to either build up or tear down a team, respectively.

2. Flip a coin to see whether Team Trust or Team Fear goes first.

3. Facilitator or Jury suggest a setting, such as: “sprint planning meeting”, or “team event”. Whoever goes first (let’s say it’s Team Fear) has 1 minute to submit a “move”.

For example, in the setting “sprint planning meeting”, Team Fear could suggest the move “Whenever someone is saying their estimate of how long it would take to get a task done, we would make judgmental, sarcastic comments implying that the person is mega slow, without directly saying it”.

4. Now, the other team (in this case, Team Trust) has a turn. Team Trust must now attempt to counterbalance/repair the effect of the other team’s move, within the same setting/scenario, assuming that the other move has happened.

For example, in the above setting, Team Trust could say, “We would rebuild trust by taking a moment to acknowledge those judgmental, sarcastic comments, directly asking the commenters to explain what they mean. We would say out loud that on principle we trust each other in our estimations and encourage anyone should speak openly if they have a problem or see something we don’t”.

5. Check with the jury, who must say whether or not they feel that the first move has been effectively counteracted by the second team. If the jury isn’t convinced the second team’s move is good enough to restore balance, then the team has to go again.

In the above example, were the Jury to say, “No, I’m sorry, Team Trust, but trust has been so corroded by those judgmental comments, I just don’t feel safe”, then Team Trust would need to add another move.

For example, “OK, in addition to calling out the judgmental comments and addressing them during the meeting in a friendly tone, I would follow up one-on-one with the person making the comments and with the person receiving them, to see what is going on. I would make it safe to talk about any underlying concerns and show receptivity & willingness to act. If necessary, I would arrange a meeting between the two of them to help them sort it out”. Etc.

6. If the Jury is now convinced that trust has been restored well enough, she may either say, OK, Team Fear, it’s your turn again (keeping the game going in the same setting), or she may suggest a new setting, asking this time that the other team (in this case Team Trust) gets a chance to submit moves first.

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Example of how it might run:

Setting suggested by facilitator or Jury: Brainstorming meeting

Team Fear goes first:

TF: We would look at our watches whenever people were putting up their ideas on the board to give them the sense that they should rush and that their ideas are not so interesting. We would start up side conversations and snicker a bit when people walk up to the board, but then be quiet when they turn around.

Team Trust goes second to counterbalance Team Fear’s move:

TT: We would ask the guy looking at his watch — is there somewhere you need to be? To call it out.

Jury: No, that’s not enough to restore trust. That just feels aggressive & it still feels unsafe to brainstorm. Team Trust has to go again.

TT: OK, we would kindly ask the person looking at their watch, if they are feeling rushed/pressured for time, if there is anything keeping them from being present now, because when they look at their watch and sigh it creates some pressure. If there is snickering, we would stop the brainstorming for a moment, and say, “It’s hard for me to focus on the ideas being shared when you’re giggling over there, could you go take a break if you need to talk about something else besides these ideas?”

Jury: OK, that’s good.

Then flip. Team trust does pro-trust action in a different setting, and Team Fear has chance to destroy.

***Notes on implementation: If you let the group play it out, they will see that huge trust-destroying acts (eg “we would break into someone’s computer & erase all their work”) need a lot of repairing, and are sometimes unrepairable. They may also generally see that it is much easier to erode than to build trust (team trust is usually at a disadvantage compared to the other one). If there is time, allow the people to switch teams to experience the opposite point of view, and definitely leave time for discussion and analysis.

I sometimes step in with suggestions if the team trust group is at a loss for how to handle trust-destroying scenarios, if I have any good ideas. Otherwise we may simply reflect together on the difficulty of any unanswerable situations (it’s ok not to solve everything for the group and leave it as an open question, that’s the truth about trust, it’s sometimes mysterious or sad when it’s been harmed).

If Team Fear won’t take off the kid gloves, I may join Team Fear and suggest moves just to provoke awareness about how that would feel, such as “I would single out Amy here and talk to her privately, regularly, about the problems I have with the rest of the group, and then I would talk to the others about how much better Amy is than they are”, to instigate reflection on why that destroys trust, and what a better way of handling my frustrations could be.

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Enjoy & as always, feel free to contact me with comments or support implementing: hollymaehaddock@gmail.com