When we talk about “Dream Team”, everyone will think about the perfection that the team will bring in completing any task or projects given at any time.
But, to have those titles on your team, you must know some features on how to get there. One of the keys is the knowledge of Behaviors that Build Trust.
Two essential things you need to know in order to have a ‘Dream Team’ before building trust.
1. Team Safe Will Take Any Risk
Some of the team may have worked together before for years, and some teams just know each other for a while, which, maybe they are from another company, country or else. Which, as a project manager that has this various types of backgrounds in your team, may have some problems uniting all the team into one without a trust.
The ultimate goal to build trust is to encourage an overall sense of psychological safety. If the team feels safe, they are willing to take any risk to learn and innovate. (Edmondson 1999)
2. “Right” person isn’t all-star
Again, when we think about a “Dream Team”, we will imagine that every member of the team should be a star or an expert in their field. So that they can become the right members for the dream team.
Actually when it comes to projects, one thing is very clear: ‘right’ does not mean ‘stars’. In fact, ‘signing too many all-stars’ was one of the primary reasons for project ‘dream teams’ to fail. Which all-star has their ego when it comes to decision making about can-do vs not-my-job situations. The all-star not adherence projects goals over own goals. So, not all-stars doesn’t mean not an ideal team or ‘dream team’.
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3 Keys to Building a Dream Team Trust
1. Keeping Track of Reliable Promises
One of the six main principles of Lean Management is Reliable Promises, which is an expression of respect for people. It’s good for you to keep a reliable promise log in a spreadsheet. So that you can open it at every meeting to find out which were met and weren’t. You can craft helpful metrics on team functionality and performance from time to time.
To make a reliable promise, you need to have:
- Authority - You are accountable and responsible for the task
- Competence - You have the knowledge to properly assess the situation
- Capacity - You can say “Yes” to all and additional task not because you want to please the team or leader
- Honesty - You have an understanding about your own task to accomplish sincerely
- Willingness to correct - If you miss the completion, immediately inform your team and explain how to resolve the situation.
These are the situations in which reliable promises for tasks that must be completed so that other work can proceed. Not every situation requires an official reliable promise. This also can get the best result if other teammates can give their opinion or ideas on how to complete the task efficiently.
Plus, People tend to feel a more positive sense of commitment if they have the freedom to say no. A sincere ”no” is usually better than a half-hearted “ok”
2. Emotional Intelligence (EI)
Even Though you have technical details under control as a project manager, one most crucial thing to build trust in the team is EI. Which is the ability to recognize your own feelings and others.
In order to get attributes of the team self-restraint, persistence and self awareness, they must have high EI, which is the hallmark of a mature, responsible and trustworthy person. While low EI is someone who thinks they are rational in decision making, but in fact irrational. Because they’re based on unrecognized emotion.
The EI is the strongest predictor of job performance better than standard academic measures. Also, someone who has a high EI can boost their career success, doesn’t matter in what field they are, including romance or intimate relationship, politics or any domain they are in. Because they know how to manage their own feelings well.
3. Cultivating a Realistic Outlook.
Most of the time, a project has many problems when it has too much positivity. The downside of the excessive optimism is blinding the team to reality. This will have a tendency to blame victims of unfortunate events in the future.
To combat this positivism culture, Gary Klein, a psychologist, pioneered the idea of troubleshooting sessions - so-called premortem. These techniques are widely used to encourage stakeholders to look to the future as if the project is already known to be a total failure.
The premortem session is tasking a team to imagine that its plan has already been implemented and failed miserably and allowed them to do correction. Teams can actively search for faults if they are not taking out the context of defending and shielding the plans from flaws.
Finally, let us digest and implement these three points in what we call as Behaviors That Build Trust in the mission to build your own “Dream Team” to make sure your projects will achieve more than before.
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The same goes for our Dream Team called CHROMIUM. All members are from all corners of Malaysia from various fields, can work together like a family in your event. Having chemistry, knowing each other's functions, helping each other even though it is not their responsibility. Just simply to make a project successful and then at the same time be able to Bring Your Event To Life.
Mohd Najib Mohd Zaki
CHROM ENTERPRISE
05.12.2023
