Designers Thrive at Building Team Trust — Here’s How
Learn some go-to exercises for improving communications and camaraderie.
When team trust is high, it often means people have intentionally created a safe space for everyone to put ideas forward and build products that help make users successful. Designers can play a critical role in this effort.
Building trust is critical. But what does that really mean? The international relations scholar Francis Fukuyama defines trust in his book (“Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity”) as “the expectation that arises within a community of regular, honest and cooperative behavior, based on commonly shared norms on the part of other members of that community.” The best time to start setting these expectations is right from the start.
In his role as Salesforce Product Design Principal Architect, Aran Rhee encourages teams to bring design in at this moment. That’s when he can ask meaningful questions and get closer to each person. It’s also when it becomes clear what the shape of the team is trust-wise. When trust is low, people are unable to be transparent and assert ideas that may improve the product. When it’s high, honesty is a shared expectation that strengthens the product.
“Some of a designer’s job is to understand what challenges a team is having,” said Rhee, who stresses that no one project is the same as another. “Design isn’t just imagining. It’s this, too. If you ignore the human factor, it’s not going to work.”
Make space for trust
The product creation process has many facets: Product values functionality. UX centers ease. Engineers prioritize system health. Research focuses on data, and the list goes on. There’s a need for alignment in a way that holds space for all these desires, and designers can create ways for everyone to contribute.
“Alignment is often thought of as a PM activity but UX can do that, too,” said Sean Mulholland, Salesforce Cross-Cloud Design Lead. He’s been able to help partners co-create beyond their silo and connect it back to what customers want.
“A doc can be interpreted in different ways,” Mulholland said. “It doesn’t always show the dependencies or what it feels like for a customer to move through the journey. When you sketch out an end-to-end wireframe, and note steps in the journey outside of your team’s specific purview, it can help everyone align on where there are gaps or pain points in the flow. That’s when we can get curious about how the user can have a more coherent and usable experience.”
Alignment starts with seeing the same challenges. When there’s some clarity, go-to team exercises can include divergent and convergent thinking. This could be lightweight (e.g. an open, transparent conversation at a stand-up) or more structured (e.g. a scheduled workshop with homework in advance). Each accomplishes its own objective.
Focus on what’s possible
Some design-thinking activities foster discussion around what can work instead of what’s not working. Try to frame up opportunities with How Might We statements. Reframing problems into positives goes a long way for reducing team friction.
Avoid overthinking
If a team is feeling stuck, then try generative activities such as Rapid 8s. All you need is a piece of printer paper for each team member. Ask them to fold it into eight squares and roughly draw an idea in each box. Eight ideas in eight minutes is common. Using low-fidelity sketches helps to move fast and break mental blocks. It can be a team-bonding moment where everyone is challenged to think beyond what comes to mind first.
Prioritize actions
Rhee has also found success narrowing ideas down through a collaborative stack-ranking process. He asks everyone to rank the ideas individually and then begins a discussion around areas of difference. It’s one way to ensure all voices feel welcome and strengthen bonds.
“Once trust is gained, it’s amazing how much synergy you find,” said Brady Sammons, Salesforce UI/UX Principal. “We end up in conversations about ‘What are we doing?’ not ‘Why are we doing it?’” You can end up in a flow state with a level of focus that is almost meditative. He takes building trust across disciplines seriously because he’s seen the actual innovation and speed that’s possible with it intact.
When teams bond, users win
Sammons recalls one team prioritizing accessibility needs in the user experience. Even though the other roles didn’t have the same depth of knowledge about accessible design, they trusted Sammons’ urgency. “Because the trust was there, the team believed it was necessary and coded keyboard navigation into the UI,” he said. “Trust allowed us to solve problems as a group.”
The result is that we make a product that matches the user’s desire.
It can’t happen without all participants feeling comfortable sharing, critiquing, and letting ideas go, if needed. Feeling heard also makes people more likely to listen to others’ ideas. When open sharing is executed successfully, a team leaves understanding why decisions are being made. Everyone can feel authentically bought-in. “If you don’t do those things, there might be underlying frustrations or objections that arise throughout a project — or at a time where it is not able to be considered,” said Rhee. If you do though, everyone is aligned and can start taking responsibility for the project together. That’s when agreements begin to surface naturally.
Communication is clearer. Teams meet milestones faster. Most importantly, products improve. And it all starts with someone who has a designer’s mindset and is willing to lead by being authentic about the challenges that exist. They seek input from the team to make the best product possible. Sound like you?
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