It is TRUST that transforms a group of people into a team.
What do you notice in the above image?
No matter how high the father might throw the child in the air, she knows she is safe with him. She trusts her father. She has full confidence in him that whatever the situation, he will do whatever it takes to ensure that she won’t get hurt. She allows him to throw her in the air without any fear or doubt.
But trust is not built in one day. You don’t trust people just like that. Organizations have a huge responsibility in building trust and providing an environment where:
- Teams share a common vision
- Teams are empowered to take their own decisions
- Teams are open to discussing problems
- Teams focus on outcomes rather than outputs
- Teams are allowed to experiment and fail
As stated in Scrum Guide 2020:
Successful use of Scrum depends on people becoming more proficient in living five values:
Commitment, Focus, Openness, Respect, and Courage
When these values are embodied by the Scrum Team and the people they work with, the empirical Scrum pillars of transparency, inspection, and adaptation come to life building trust.
To build trust, the entire team should imbibe these Scrum values while working with the Scrum events and artifacts.
Scrum teams share a common vision. They craft and share a common goal to achieve in the Sprint. This enables the team to make faster decisions and to build trust. The whole team is accountable to work together collaboratively to achieve the Sprint Goal. They are cross-functional and trust each other that as a team they can solve any problem within their area of accountability.
Scrum Teams are empowered to make their own decisions. They are self-managing teams. No one directs them or gives instructions on how to do their work. They might disagree on some points but they collectively discuss and come to an agreement. They respect and trust each other to develop better solutions.
Scrum teams are open to discussing any problem or impediment they face during the Sprint. They don’t wait till the end to share their concerns. By getting everyone involved they seek help to quickly resolve the issue. They trust that asking for help doesn’t mean they are not capable to perform their duty. We all are humans and we all need help. We don’t have all the solutions in the world. The members of the Scrum team trust that bringing everyone together for discussion can resolve the issue much faster.
Scrum teams focus on outcomes. They collaborate with the stakeholders throughout the Sprint and deliver a valuable, useful increment for each Sprint. This continuous focus and collaboration with the stakeholders builds trust and fosters stakeholder engagement.
Scrum Teams are allowed to experiment and fail. At the end of the Sprint, if the outcomes are not what was expected, they are not penalized. Instead, they collaborate as a team during the Sprint Retrospective and discuss what went wrong with regards to individuals, interactions, processes, tools, and Definition of Done. They are given a safe environment that fosters engagement, trust, a state in which they are willing to tackle difficult tasks, take risks, think deeply about issues and develop new solutions.
To conclude, in order to enable Trust, we all need a safe environment where we are allowed to express ourselves freely without any fear of punishment, where we are allowed to fail and experiment, where we are empowered to make our own decisions, where we work as a team instead of individuals, where we share a common vision and goal, where we respect each other and have the courage to do the right thing.
A real team is a group of very different individuals who enjoy working together and who respect, care and trust each other. — Leadership First
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