Why Is It So Hard to Build A Team?

 

Teams Are Easy, Right?

In theory it should be easy to create a team.  Each stakeholder part of the organization sends their best and brightest, outside expertise is brought in, the goal is explained and the “team” gets to work.  The reality is almost always different.

The reality is that each stakeholder part of the organization has a different agenda.  Some parts of the organization really want the goal to happen.  Some kind of want it to happen, as long as it doesn’t disrupt other things.  Some parts of the organization emphatically don’t want it to happen.  In fact those parts of the organization and their leadership will work hard to keep the goals from happening.  Leadership in some parts of the organization may feel that the project goals have been inflicted upon them.  When they select team members, they may choose people who aren’t the best and brightest.  Or they may instruct their team members to protect the suborbanization’s interest at all costs.

Frequently the people who are chosen to join the team are not relieved of their day jobs.  The people in their home organizations don’t have a real appreciation of the team demands being placed on the team member and just see a diminishment in performance.  They don’t see the massive increase in responsibility and demand being created by team responsibilities.  This creates a tension for the team member that is painful.  It actually puts the team member’s career at risk.

Ideally the outside expert resources are there with the best interests of the organization at heart.  Frequently, however, they are the “them” to the organization’s “us.”  There are rules about how these outside resources can be treated by the organization–there are barriers to keep them from being identified as employees for tax and regulation purposes.  These differences just enforce the ‘outsider’ aspect.  It is hard to create a team when you’ve got the them and us dichotomy.

According to Wikipedia, a dichotomy is “any splitting of a whole into exactly two non-overlapping parts, meaning it is a procedure in which a whole is divided into two parts.

It is a partition of a whole into two parts that are:

• jointly exhaustive: everything must belong to one part or the other, and
• mutually exclusive: nothing can belong simultaneously to both parts”

How do you create a ‘whole’–a TEAM–when you start out with the split between the outsiders and the insiders? How do you build a team when each member comes from an organization, led by a leader in control of the team member’s career, with a different agenda?

Start with the Goals

• The goals must serve the ORGANIZATION.  The goals may serve one part of the organization more, but the WHOLE organization must benefit from project.
• The team members–all of them, from every part of the organization, from the inside and the outside–must be able to see the benefit to the whole organization.  This may be a process.  Every team member comes to the team with his/her own organization’s perspective.  Changing that perspective to see and want what is best for the whole organization is a process, it takes time.  It must start, however, with goals that DO benefit the whole organization.  Without this, creating a ‘team’ is a non-starter.

Build Relationships

People will work to benefit their friends.  I’m not saying that all team members have to be friends, but there have to be cordial, complex, willing relationships among team members.  That transformation from us to “US” must take place.  This is what organizations are trying to create and support when they bring in “team building” activities.  These help.  They are not enough, though, especially when the team is dipped briefly in the team building and then goes back to whatever business as usual that happened before.

Things that help build relationships:

• Proximity–teams that work together and live together (in a work sense) form relationships and are forced to work through problems among themselves.  In a virtual world, you have to figure out how to do this.  Things like Lync and Skype help with this enormously, but creating opportunities to really get to know each other are essential.
• Eating–human beings feel better about people when they break bread together.  Why is that?  Who knows–it probably goes back to the cave days.  At any rate, eating together helps build relationships.
• Playing–it helps to see each other in different roles and places.  Outside the work context.  When you play together you start to see each other differently.  You develop inside jokes, fun memories, even trust.
• Talking–encourage people on the team to talk about things beyond just the tasks of the project.  It is NOT a waste of time.
• Solving hard problems–let the team, rather than their leadership, solve the hard problems.  At first they will resist that.  At first they will delegate up.  If they start working together to solve the problems, they will form different, more integrated relationships.
• Celebrating–all kinds of celebrations create and cement relationships.  When people feel happy and proud, they feel connected. They associate with positive celebratory feelings help cement the relationships.

Discipline and Execution

Get the project done.  Enforce deadlines–for everyone.  The chief complaint for people on teams is that some people do all the work and everyone gets all the credit.  If there is a system that assigns tasks and enforces delivery on those tasks; if team members see steady progress and see that everyone is working; if leadership sees things moving along and meeting expectations, then the team works better.

Bottom Line: Do What It Takes

Building teams is work.  Don’t take the team creation be the end.  Keep trying things until your done.  A great team delivers a project.  It’s worth it.

Bosses Are People Too

You Think The Same As You Did Before

For those of you who are over the age of 25, you know how you feel the same no matter how old you are?  The outside may seem older, but to yourself—inside your mind—you feel the same age.  It’s really weird.  You would think that as you age, you would think differently, but if you do, you don’t notice it.

The same is true when you become a boss.  You think of yourself as the same.  You have different responsibilities and you have to do them differently than you did before you were a boss (you have more power and that helps get things done), but you think of yourself as being the same.  Again, when you become an executive, how other people think of you changes, but how you think of yourself stays much the same.  The problem is (in both cases–age and organization level) that other people see you differently.

Power Changes Things

When you are a boss, you have positional power over people–you have the ability and the right to decide their fate.  You can give them a good review, or put them on “a program.”  You decide how much raise they get (within parmeters established by the company) and therefore whether their quality of life goes up or down.  You give them assignments which can create visibility or push them beyond their ability to perform.  You believe in your own head that you are fair, that you make the right decisions on all of these things, and that you are a good and likeable person.  Right?

Just by virtue of having this power, however, you will frequently stop being given the benefit of the doubt.  Your motivations will not be seen as virtuous, your decisions will not be seen as fair (by everyone) and your subordinates will begin to feel a distance toward  you–even those who are your friends.  It is just the way it is.  If you are a boss, you need to be aware of this.  To do your job, you must exercise positional power.  You can counterbalance the negative side of positional power, however, by building your personal power.  Personal power is acquired through respect by others.  Personal power comes in several flavors:  referent power, information power, connection power.  When you have personal power, that benefit of the doubt comes back.  Personal power stays with you when you leave the specific job.  Personal power does not alienate people as much as positional power does.  Personal power helps others view you as “a people” too.

Treat Your Boss Like “A People”

Now, flip the switch.  Think about your own boss(es).  They have the same issues.  S/he sees herself as fair, virtuous, and trying to do the right thing.  S/he is puzzled about why her subordinates don’t see her that way.  Consider giving him/her the benefit of the doubt.  Try to overlook the positional power and treat him/her like “a people.”  You will stand out.  You will engender trust by trusting.  And that will begin to build your personal power with your boss.

Why Doesn’t Your Team Work?

All of us get to spend time on teams.  Some of us spend all of our time on teams. There are terrible teams, good teams and great teams.  Most of us rarely get to spend much time on great teams.  For one thing, it takes time to build a great team–more than a few months, usually.  Few of us know how to build a good team, though, even with enough time.

Let’s talk about what makes a great team.

Unlike the common assumptions, great teams are not made up of friends, or people who are the same.  The best teams have lots of different kinds of people, with different temperments and skills.   Meredith Belbin, a British researcher who focuses on teams, started his research with the assumption that if he created a team of the smartest people–”A” players–then it would be a high performance team.  What he found was that intelligence itself was not enough.  A high performing team needs team members with a variety of skills and perspectives.  He identified the following roles necessary for a high performance team:

• Plant:  Someone who is creative and who brings ideas to the table. (For my non-British readers:  think of this as someone who is embedded in the team who is a source of ideas.)  Someone who looks at things differently and is the team problem solver.
• Resource Investigator: Someone who is the networker of the group.  Someone who is ‘connected’ in a way that helps the team find the resources and/or sources for whatever they need to be able to deliver team results.
• Chairman (called the  Coordinator after 1988): Someone who ensures a balance among the members of the team–making sure that they all contribute to discussions and decisions. Someone who makes the goals clear, and ensures that the roles and responsibilities are clear.
• Shaper:   Someone who challenges team members and who pushes them to overcome barriers.  Someone who pushes for agreement and decisions.
•  Monitor-Evaluator:  Someone who is able to point out the challenges to other people’s solutions.  Someone who sees all the options, asks questions, points out the issues.
• Team Worker: Someone who focuses on the interpersonal relationships within the team.  Someone who is sensitive to the nuances among the interactions of the team members.  Someone who helps ensure the long-term cohesion among team members.  Someone who helps deal with conflict, the group mediator.
• Company Worker ( Implementor after 1988):  Someone who can figure out how to create the systems and processes that get the team the results they want.  Someone who is practical and pragmatic.
• Completer Finisher:   Someone who is detail-oriented.  Someone who sees the defects before anyone else.  Someone who is clear on where the team is in relationship to its deadlines.  Someone who focuses on completing tasks, finding errors, making deadlines and staying on schedule.
• Specialist: Someone who brings specialized knowledge to the team, like someone who is the Finance expert, or the Supply Chain expert or the Contract specialist.

Remember, these are ROLES, not people.  One person can potentially fill more than one role, but ideally not more than two.  We are more naturally comfortable in some of these roles than others.  The Plant (the idea person) is usually not good at being a Monitor–figuring out all the problems with the ideas.  Many of these role-fillers drive others crazy.  They balance each other out and reduce the risks of rushing to decisions or dragging to decisions or running people off or being too focused on deadlines or too focused on people or too focused on details.  Belbin has written several books on his research on teams.

When team members are presented with Belbin’s Team Role Assessments® it is amazing how they stop being irritated with each other and start appreciating the traits that had previously driven them all nuts.

Let’s Talk About the Work of Being a High Performance Team

The “who” of a team is only half the battle, though.  The other part of a high performance team is the work that teams have to go through to become great.  There are two models that help describe that work.  The first is the Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing stages of Bruce Tuckman’s model of group development.  Most of us have heard of this one.  It is useful to acknowledge that group behavior goes through stages and movement through these stages is necessary to develop the trust and authentic interactions necessary to be a good team.

The other model is less well-known, but is the one that I’ve taught to my graduate management classes.  It is the Drexler-Sibbett Team Performance ™ Model.  The Drexler-Sibbett Model acknowledges that team development is dynamic.  Teams have set backs, add people, change goals, get new managers, have failures, traumas, successes and constantly need to back up and ‘re-do’  some stage in the team’s development.  It is this focus on dynamic/interactive progress and re-setting that seems to me to be extremely realistic.  The Drexler-Sibbett stages are:

• Orientation:  Why am I here? (Note–it isn’t why are we here–if you don’t answer for each and every person why s/he is there, they won’t even begin to engage.)
• Trust Building: Who are you? and you? and you?  (Most ‘team building’ activities are focused on this stage.
• Goal Clarification: What are we doing here? Few teams get very clear on goals.  They rarely get past the goals of all the individuals to the team goal.  The person from finance is there to protect finance’s interests, the person from IT is there to protect IT’s interest.  It is only when the individual goals are replaced by the team goal that the team begins to move to high performance.
• Commitment:  How are we going to do it?  This gets into the messy part of resources, who, when, how.  This is when the theory and planning turn into reality and the trouble really starts.
• Implementation:   Who does what, when, where and how.  The real stuff.  Things start to be hard.  Things start to get delivered.  Things don’t work and have to get fixed.  Misunderstandings and mistakes are uncovered and dealt with.  The struggle and the payoff happen in this stage.
• High Performance: This is where things really hum.  People cooperate and trust and do and finish things.
• Renewal:  This is where it all starts again.

The important concept of this model is that teams move forward and backward as the situation warrants.  New people come in, the Orientation and Trust Building stages may need to be done again (sometimes in an abbreviated way).  If Implementation isn’t working, then Commitment may need a refresh.

A Powerful Career Tool

Getting teams to high performance is hard work.   It can’t be done through a team building exercise, or through the boss announcing what the goals are.  Learning to build great teams, however, can be enormously helpful in getting you to the next level of your career.  People who know the mechanics of building great teams can do it over and over and over.  They can do it in different organizations and they can  deliver different kinds of goals.  They can do it at all levels of the organization and in all sizes of organizations.  Well worth learning!

Can’t Trust Your Boss?

What is Trust?

First, let’s talk about what trust is.  Trust is the ability to rely on a particular response from another person.  If I trust you, then I’m pretty sure that you’ll do what I expect you to do and if you don’t, I’m pretty sure that there was a good reason why you didn’t do it.  If I trust you, I give you the benefit of the doubt.  If I don’t trust you, then I don’t think you’ll do what I need you to do, and if you say you’ll do it, I don’t really give you the benefit of the doubt.

In our world, we trust a lot of people, and they deserve it.  We trust that someone at the electric company will do his/her job and that our electricity will stay on.  We trust that someone will deliver the food to the grocery store and that it will be there when we go to buy it.  The grocery store trusts that we will pay for the groceries with legal money and that we won’t steal the food instead of paying for it. We trust that people will drive on the correct side of the street and that teachers will actually teach our children.  We trust pilots to follow the rules in flying their planes.  We trust (rely) in standard behaviors.

BUT, we don’t trust bankers not to set up deals that are unfair.  We don’t trust politicians.  We don’t trust lawyers.  We don’t trust . . .  complete your list.  Well, actually, the truth is that we do trust these folks according to my definition of trust.  We trust (rely on a particular response) that these folks are going to act in their own interest.  (Yeah, yeah, I know there are bankers, politicians and lawyers who don’t act in their own interest –but you’d never know it by talking to most people/listening to the news, etc.)  So . . . if we use my definition of trust, what can you trust your boss to do?

What Can You Trust Your Boss To Do?

This is a serious question—what can you rely on your boss to do consistently?  Good or bad? 

• Does he show up?
• Does she help you understand what the organization is trying to accomplish?  The vision?
• Is he clear about what you should be doing?  Your deadlines?
• Does she take your side with your peers?  With her peers? With her boss?
• Does he always disagree with you?
• Does she act in your interest?  In her interest?  When conflicted, which way does she come down?

When you use my definition of trust–able to rely on a particular response–chances are good that you actually CAN trust your boss more than you think you can.  There are probably consistent responses that you see from your boss.  When you say you can’t trust your boss, you aren’t likely using my definition of trust.  You more likely mean that you think your boss will act in his/her own interest instead of  yours when faced with the choice.

We All Act In Our Own Self-Interest

There are even those who argue that altruists are acting in their own interest.  I don’t know if I’d take it that far, but we all have lines that we draw.  Most of us would put our children, our families, our communities over others.  It’s hard not to choose to for yourself, even when you feel conflicted between your own good and the greater good. It’s pretty human. If you feel that your boss chooses his/her own self interest every time over your self interest, you are probably right.  S/he may not even see it that way.  S/he may be in denial about it.  Regardless, it is likely you don’t like it.  BUT if it happens on a regular basis, then you can rely on that particular response.  You can trust your boss to act in a way that you don’t like–to act in his/her own interest instead of yours.

Shift the Way You Look at This

If you can rely (trust) on your boss to act in a certain way, you can begin to figure out how to use your boss’ reactions, by learning to get consistent reactions, to be successful.  If you can stop feeling hurt/distrustful/unhappy about the fact that your boss doesn’t act in your interest, but rather in his own, then you can learn how to get consistent reactions from your boss.  If you want your boss to do something in particular, how can you frame her decision so that she sees it as a decision in her self interest?  If your boss consistently decides things to support ‘favorites’ then figure out how to frame the decision as supporting those folks.

As long as you are struggling to get things done in a way that protects your self-interest, or is for the ‘greater good,’ and are frustrated and angry because your boss doesn’t do that, you aren’t succeeding.  If you reframe it for your boss–you can think of it in any way you like–so that your boss feels like he is making the decision for whatever his purposes are, then the decision can go the way you want it to.  You win.  Why the hell do you care that the boss isn’t making the decision for the ‘right’ reason?  You win. 

See–you CAN trust your boss–even if you can’t.

Get a Mentor. Use a Mentor.

Get a Mentor

I know you’ve heard it.  If you’ve been reading this blog, you’ve heard it from me.  You need a mentor to help your career.  Easier said than done, right?

Typical questions about mentors and mentoring are:

• What is mentoring?
• How do I find a good mentor for me?
• How do I ask someone to be my mentor?
• How does having a mentor work to help my career?
• What if my mentor and I don’t get along?
• What if my mentor won’t meet with me?
• How do I end the mentor relationship?

What Is Mentoring?

Mentoring, first and foremost, is a LEARNING relationship.  The old-school model of mentoring was that the senior, experienced successful mentor took the junior, inexperienced mentee under his wing (yes, it was always a ‘he’).  Today’s mentoring is much more complex, but much more productive.  It is different depending on the people involved.  It could be a senior person helping a junior person succeed in an organization.  It could be an expert helping a novice speed up the process of learning.  It could be a junior person helping an executive understand social media.  The key parts to a mentor/mentee effort are LEARNING and RELATIONSHIP.  It is a collaboration, not a one-way relationship.  Both parties, but most importantly the mentee, take responsibility for the success of the relationship.  The mentee must have a plan, goals and the willingness to step up and reach out for the mentoring to be maximally successful.

How Do You Find A Mentor?

You start with what you need.  When you think about your career, what is it that you need?  Do you need to learn how to navigate the organization’s politics?  Do you need to learn how to be an effective executive?  Do you need Executive presence? Do you need to learn how to manage technical people?  Do you need to learn to manage your peers?  Think strategically?  Present your ideas better?  Whatever it is (and don’t focus on everything at once–pick the biggest/most important thing), think about who you know, or know of, who can do it well.  If there is more than one person who fits that description, who do you think has the best ‘chemistry’ with you.  Who do you most want to learn from?  Who might have more time? Who do you think might be the better teacher?  Based on these questions, pick someone who could mentor you in what you need.

How Do You Ask Someone To Be A Mentor?

Once you’ve identified someone, make a plan.  What do you want to learn from the person?  Over what time period?  What format would work best for you?  Informal–like over coffee?  Formally scheduled meetings?  Asking questions?  Your mentor talking and telling stories?  Once you’ve thought through these, what kind of proposal can you make to your mentor?  Something like:

I’ve admired how well you navigate this organization to get things done for your organization for a while now.  I was wondering if you’d be willing to mentor me on how to do that?  I was thinking maybe we could have coffee some morning and you could share with me some of the things you wish someone had told you?

Imagine if someone approached you this way.  It’s likely that you would be flattered.  If you had the time, it is likely that you would be willing to do this.  You’re not asking for a long term commitment in this situation.  You’re testing the waters.  If you have the first meeting (which, if it is more comfortable for you, you could formally schedule a meeting), and the chemistry seems good and the mentor seemed to enjoy it as much as you did, then you can ask for another meeting.  In the second meeting, you can ask the person about him/herself.

• How did you get to where you are in the organization?
• What have been your biggest career learnings?
• What do you wish you had known that you know now?
• Are there things you would have done differently?
• Which jobs have taught you the most?  Which bosses?

If this conversation goes well, then it is time to suggest that the person be a mentor.  Ask if he is willing to be your mentor.  Tell him what kinds of things you’d like to learn from him.  Over what period of time?  How often would you like to meet with him?  (Be very reasonable here).  Show him that you will take responsibility for learning with him as your guide.  If he agrees, ask him how he wants you to be prepared before your conversations?  What kind of follow-up and follow-through does he want?  Get clear on your goals.

If you approach it in these stages, you get to feel out the relationship element of the mentoring–do you think it will work?  Push yourself to ask if the relationship works for you, because it will be worth it.  If s/he says no, don’t take it personally.  It is probably about time commitment or, just as likely, about the mentor feeling inadequate to the task.

How Does Having A Mentor Work?

The mentoring relationship is about learning–usually both the mentor and the mentee learn.  Sometimes the mentor is able to open doors for opportunities, but almost always the mentor opens minds.  The mentor helps the mentee see the world through different eyes (usually higher ranking eyes).  The mentor helps the mentee have a new perspective–thinking strategically instead of tactically, thinking like a sales person instead of an HR person, understanding how decisions get made at the top of the organization.  These new perspectives are JUST AS IMPORTANT as if the mentor helps the mentee land a new job.  It is these new perspectives that enable the mentee to succeed at the new job.

What If We Don’t Get Along?

Sometimes mentors and mentees don’t get along.  Having a couple of exchanges before you ask for a more formal mentoring relationship can sometimes help avoid this, but not always.  If you don’t get along with your mentor, ask yourself why.  Is it because she is speaking truth to you and you don’t like it?  If that is the reason, it is probably very worth hanging in there.  It is really hard to get people to tell you the truth–it is easier to learn to deal with it than to find someone else who will tell it.  Is it because the mentor reminds you of someone who you haven’t gotten along with in the past?  Your father?  Your older sister?  Your first boss?  Again, it’s really better to work through these issues than to find someone else–this is the kind of issue that will continue to bit you until you learn to deal with it.  Is it because the person is a bully or abusive?  If so, then it is best to end the relationship.  Don’t end it by stomping out.  Just thank the person for all the help s/he has provided (this is VERY important) and tell him/her to be sure to let you know if you can return the favor.  Then don’t schedule any more appointments.

What If My Mentor Won’t Meet With Me?

It is highly that anyone you want to mentor you is a very busy person.  When you have the conversation requesting that she become your mentor, you need to agree how often you will meet.  The more you can talk it out–what to do if one of you has to cancel, what to do if scheduling becomes a problem, what are the expectations, what to do if this becomes too burdensome–the less likely this is to be a problem.  After a number of cancels–this number should be different if it is a CEO v. a manager–then it is appropriate to ask whether it would be better to take a break till a time that is better.  Then go find someone else.  The biggest risk here, though, is that you will interpret normal scheduling problems as the mentor not wanting to do this.  It is likely that the mentor just has a busy schedule.  Don’t read too much into it.

How Do I End The Mentor Relationship?

It is best that you make some kind of arrangement for the end of the mentoring relationship (not the end of the relationship) in the initial agreement that establishes the relationship.    You can make it time specific or task specific–get through your next performance review, or do an Executive level presentation, but you do need to identify what the goal and timing of the mentoring relationship should be.

Many, many mentor relationships end and friendship remains.  That is ok, but be careful to make the shift in your mental model.  Be sure to thank your mentor in a meaningful way.    It’s great to keep notes as the mentoring proceeds and to write a summary of what you learned over time for your mentor.  It will help cement the learning in both your minds.  This could be one of the most important relationships of your working life.

A Good Book That Will Help

• A Mentee’s Guide, Making Mentoring Work For You by Lois Zachery and Lori Fischler

Trust me, damn it!

Demanding Trust Doesn’t Work

I once had a boss demand that I trust her again.  We can talk later about how I made the mistake of letting her know that I didn’t trust her (not a good career move, and no I didn’t TELL her that), but DEMANDING that someone trust you NEVER works.  If you have the kind of relationship where you’re demanding anything, it is a trust-less relationship.

Trust is hard to define.  I knew what she meant.  She wanted me to go back to being willing to do whatever she needed/wanted without doubting her intent or integrity.  She wanted our relationship to be based on mutual “confident expectation.”  I would have liked that too, but she had done something (that I felt was dishonest) that so violated my confidence in her integrity, that I no longer gave her the benefit of the doubt.  When I told her that I might be able to trust her again, but that it would take time, that was unsatisfactory to her.  At least it was all out in the open.  The consequences, however, were not pretty for either of us.

Since then, I’ve had the experience of people not trusting me.  Some didn’t trust me because I outranked them.  Some didn’t trust me because I was a different race, or age, or had a different nationality.  Trust is not an automatic gift, it has to be earned.  Not being trusted, however, is definitely not fun.

You CANNOT Be a Good Leader If They Don’t Trust You

Think about the people who you have trusted.  Have you trusted a boss?  A friend?  A stranger?  Someone from a different generation?  A pastor? A car dealer?  A banker? A lawyer?  See . . . all of these invoke different levels of trust reactions in you—and they are just labels.  What made you trust the people who you trust?  For most of us, it is consistent, persistent behaviors that we can predict and (for the most part) agree with.  It is rare that we trust someone instantly, although it happens.

Excellent leaders are trusted.  It is that trust that enables high performance teams.  All leadership gurus talk about the necessity of trust for great leadership.

So . . . How Do You Get Them To Trust You?

Want people to trust you?  Here are some important prerequisites:

• Be trustworthy—Well, duh.  You’d be surprised, however, at how many managers bemoan the fact that no one trusts them while they are working secret agendas, regularly mislead co-workers, subordinates, and/or the community.

• Trust others—It’s amazing how well this works!  The very experience of being trusted generates the willingness to trust in most of us.  When you trust people to do something they haven’t done before, or to speak in front of a group, or to represent you in a meeting with your boss, that makes them more willing to trust you to be telling the truth, to takes risks, or to move forward without all the details.

• Be real.  Let people know who you are.  Let them understand your motivations.  If you are trying to do something and the motivation isn’t clear—people make it up.  If they trust you, they give you the benefit of the doubt.  Until they trust you, you are better off making your motives clear.  Even if they don’t like what you are doing, they learn to believe that there is nothing hidden.  It’s more important that people understand than that they agree.

• Listen.  When people believe that you are listening, that you are trying to understand, they begin to trust you.  When you don’t listen, they stop trying to tell you.  When that happens, there is no trust.

• Treat people with respect.  When people feel respected, they feel whole.  They feel more open to understanding and trusting.

• Be loyal.  If people know that you are loyal to them, they are much more likely to be loyal to you.  Loyalty is closely related to trust.

These are simple things.  They are not easy to do.  When we are caught up in the day to day tasks of work life, it is hard to remember to do them all.  They are behaviors, though, with huge payoffs.  People who trust you can deliver miracles sometimes, because they are willing to go above and beyond and take the chance that it will be worthwhile.