The truth about building trust in a team
Lately everyone is talking about trust. Let’s create it buy doing team building here, team building there, team building everywhere!
According to Forbes, team building might not work anyway, here are 4 reasons why from this article:
The Learning Gap
“There’s a very large learning gap between doing activities on Dartmoor with your colleagues and working with the same bunch of people back at the office,” writes Mercer. “It’s possible to draw parallels and bring out useful learning points, but it takes skilled facilitation to do this effectively and it’s especially difficult to ensure that people take the learning back into the workplace.”
The Embarrassment Factor
Not everybody looks forward to having attention drawn to themselves in roleplay or other team-building activities. They may not be fit, confident or sociable enough. Some people actively fear the embarrassment and humiliation of these events. And it’s a mistake to claim glibly that it will be alright on the night. For some employees, team-building activities actually drive a wedge between them and their colleagues and employer, rather than bringing them together and fostering engagement and team loyalty.
The Risk Of Patronizing Employees
By forcing employees to take part in so-called fun and games, employers risk patronizing their team members with the assumption that they need such sweeteners to incentivize them to pull together and do a great job.
Confusion Between Socializing And Team-Building
Don’t make the mistake of confusing social and entertainment activities with actual team-building, warns Mercer. The former have their place, but not all work colleagues want to do these things together and it’s not essential that they do so. Forcing employees to socialize with people they would rather simply see as colleagues can create hostility, not togetherness, producing tensions that prevent teams working well for customers and stakeholders.
What if I just skip the event?
I never truly want to join these events — I have a personal life outside work and I’d rather do that. But, I can’t help but feel that if I don’t join, then I’m an outcast, that creates some internal conflict. On the morning after when I arrive to work and everyone is talking about who chugged the most beers, there’s a certain feeling of being left out.
Do you want to build a team of professionals, or a team of friends? Friends can be unassertive with fear of losing the friendship, professionals can give and receive feedback in a professional manner.
I personally feel trust(both ways) when I’m able to be myself².
Being dragged to a team building event I don’t necessarily want to go to isn’t going to build trust, at least not the right kind¹.
Team building should be everyday, during work, by learning to work together as a team on the problems at hand, not on special occasions with games and beer.
And speaking of trust. Trust in your immediate co-worker isn’t all there is. One needs to trust the product, vision, and management of the organization, or all the team building money is wasted. A team that trusts each other but not the company will collectively quit at some point.
TL;DR;
Get your teams to trust each other's skills and professionalism, not their beer chugging ability.
This is very effective for consultants and short term work arrangements, but if you want long-term benefits, you’ll have to find ways to build the right kind of trust.
Creating the wrong kind of trust will also attract and retain the wrong kind of talent.
Notes
¹ I don’t need my team to be my best friends and suck up (unpaid)time after work, it’s a professional relationship and the trust should be mostly on a professional level. I use the word mostly because some personal trust is always necessary, but it shouldn’t be the thing helping to make decisions at work. It becomes hard to understand if you made a certain decision because this person if your friend, or because of professional merit.
² Skipping a team building event can easily mean you won’t get a promotion because you didn’t have a beer with the right person. And this promotion comes from the wrong kind of trust.
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