Forming a team and getting it to operate and function effectively is one of the key success factors of any project. A lot of work has gone into defining the various stages that a team goes through and helping the project manager to understand team dynamics and how to deal with each phase. However reality can sometimes be very far removed from theory. Getting beyond team storming is sometimes a bigger challenge than what we realise, and the quicker we move the team beyond that stage the better we can function and get to what is important in the project and that is delivery.
Team storming for me constitute a lack of trust and a lack of trust implies an over active impulse to self-persevere and a destructive perception of feeling threatened by others in the team. This is further heightened by a struggle for power and a fight to be high enough on the pecking order.
Stephen Covey wrote a book called the Speed of Trust. For those of you keen on reading PD(Personal Development) books, do yourself a favour and read this one. Its fresh look on business politics clearly identifies the cause of many a struggle. That lame feeling of frustration and discouragement felt by so many trapped in a net of political games, who truly just wants to get on with it.
So why is bridging and building trust such a difficult thing for project managers and team members alike? Where did this lack of trust start and how can we build trust quicker? The answer to these questions is not an easy one, and I would love to hear your views on it but I think that we are coached in mistrusting. From an early age we were instructed by our parents not to trust strangers and rightfully so. It is just not safe to trust anybody and for so many, when we found it in our hearts to trust somebody, were badly hurt. Unfortunately the scars left by those we trusted are deeper than those we expected deceit from.
In the book, Stephen talks about the 5 waves of trust as a mechanism to deal with mistrust and again I encourage you to read through it in detail. It obviously starts with yourself first, moves to what is called relationship trust and then works towards organisational trust. If we want to move through to trusting one another quicker we need to work at building trust and that cannot just be done by getting everybody into a room and hoping for the best. You know the “pickup sticks” model where we throw everything on the floor and hope to move the individual elements later without upsetting the balance of the rest. Surely we cannot be that naïve.
It requires a concerted effort from a project manager that lives a life of integrity. It requires solid characters with confidence in themselves and their team mates. It requires hard work and sometimes calls you to lose yourself for the good of the entire team and doesn’t come without sacrifice. Trust, unfortunately doesn’t happen by itself but requires some out of the box thinking and lots of character building. Your views?
