Building Trust and Commitment

Characteristics of committed team members

- Have the ability to focus
- Look forward to work
- Care about results
- Enjoy working as a team
- Take it personally
- Respect teammates

Building Trust and commitment among team members
- Modeling trustworthiness
- Restoring trust on a team
- Building commitment on a team

Modeling Trustworthiness
Trust occurs with the believe that members:
- Tell the truth
- Have the teams best interest at heart
- Have the abilities to get the job done

With Trust members:
- Feel secure the team can achieve the goals
- Avoid communication breakdowns
- Share the workload

Lack of trust in a team leader:
- Members may not carry out tasks as you wish
- Time wasted since you have to justify all your decisions

Building Trust:
- Practice honesty
o Tell the truth
- Take responsibility
o Keep your promises and commitments
o Take responsibility of your actions
o Take responsibility to correct wrongs
- Act fairly
o Dont show favoritism
o Treat everyone equally
o Give credit to others

Restoring Trust on a Team

Gaining Trust:
- Being honest
- Taking responsibility
- Following through
- Saying what you really think
- Showing fairness and goodwill

Strategies for restoring trust on a team:
- Hold a team meeting
o Members to identify trustworthy and untrustworthy behaviors
o Members to Determine specific actions to be taken
o Member to give verbal commitments
- Develop guidelines
o Having an action plan
o Outlining principles (rules on how to speak and how to listen)
o Commitment to move forward

Building commitment on a team
- Give support
- Provide a sense of safety
- Provide interesting work
- Acknowledge contributions


Fostering Effective Communication and Collaboration

Qualities of Good Team Communications
- Set Team Value
- Lead by example

Characteristics of healthy communication:
- Direct, Honest and concise (who, what, where, when, why and how)
- Clear, understandable and precise
- Two-way (free to give and receive positive and negative feedback)
- Encouraging
- Information is constantly exchanged

Handling Communication Problems in Team Members:
- Two Type of people:
o Too Dominant
Over-criticism
Interrupters
o Too Withdrawn
Groupthink
Non-contributors

Strategies for countering over-criticism
- Immediately say something to regain control of the meeting
- Ask the overly critical person what their suggestion would be
- Refocus efforts on solutions, not criticism

Strategies for countering groupthink
- Play devils advocate
- Divide the group
- Give participants time to think

Strategies for Interrupters
- Set ground rules
- Interrupt the interrupter

Strategies for non-contributors
- Moderate dominant team members
- Watch for signs
- Encourage non-contributors to speak up

Achieving Healthy Collaboration on a Team

Unfettered competition
Super-collaboration

Achieve balance:
- Reward Ambition
- Emphasize processes how to reach end goals

Achieve collaboration:
- Team oriented messages
o Link tasks to team goals
o Encourage thinking as a team
o Foster sharing and support
- Team oriented assignments
o Assigning tasks to partners or subgroups
o Designating mentors

With balanced collaboration team members:
- Are not afraid to speak up
- Deliver on commitments
- Are more self-sufficient
- Put the teams needs first
- Go beyond whats required
- Are motivated by task and team

Motivating and Optimizing Performance

Assessing Team Performance
- Continuous Team Evaluation (Compare performance against objectives)
o Enhances motivation
- Ascertain performance objectives
- Share positive comments
- Share improvement comments
- Evaluate overall performance
- Seek Feedback
- Set guidelines or timetables for improvement

Using Coaching to Improve Team Performance

GROW model

- Establish the Goal
o Agree on a single goal.
o Dont criticize the goal.
o Dont bring your own agenda.

- Check Reality
o Encourage team members to talk openly
o Dont criticize people or procedures
o Dont force your opinion on people

- Identify Options for dealing with the current reality
o Persist in asking questions
o Encourage all to contribute
o Discuss Pros and Cons
o Dont interject your ideas
o Dont judge

- Wrap up the coaching session
o Ensure team members commit to taking actions
o Set time frame for taking action
o Identify potential obstacles in the way
o Dont dictate how the team should proceed
o Dont judge the teams decisions

Motivating Team through Shared Leadership

- Participatory management methods -> empowerment
o Delegate leadership responsibility
o Allowing team members to use their skills
Support peers
o Sharing or rotating leadership roles
Responsibilities explained and posted
Change in leadership scheduled
Team members discuss experience

Dealing with Conflict

Causes of Conflict on a Team
- Unmet expectations
- Perceptions of unfairness
- Unmanaged diversity
- Change

Effects of Conflict
- Team members become unable to rationally process information
- Team members resist listening to ideas
- Team members spend time and energy dealing with the conflict

Resolving Team Conflicts through Communication

Principles for resolving conflict through communication which are being open and honest, clarifying
expectations and clarifying perceptions.

The Role of Communication
- Agreed on guidelines on behavior
- Help team members better understand each other

Principles of resolving conflict
- Be open and honest,
- Clarify expectations (Team Formation & Beginning of new initiative)
- Clarify perceptions

Six Approaches to Team Conflict Resolution
- Encourage them to work out the issue on their own
- Meet with them in private
- Follow formal disciplinary action

Six Techniques (Starting with least affective to most affective)
- Avoiding
o Members need to cool off
o You need time to decide way to solve
- Forcing
o Keep things moving
o Make quick or unpopular decisions
- Accommodating
o If the relationship is more important than the issue
o When one person has power over another
- Compromising
o When both parties have equal power but mutually exclusive goals
o When you need a temporary solution to a complex problem
- Collaborating
o When two sets of concerns cant be compromised
o Combine insight from several team members who have different perspectives
- Confronting
o Identifying a problems root cause and its best solution by examining alternatives
o Open dialog with team members to assess and consider options

Resolving Team Conflicts through Principled Negotiation

- Each person should have interests met
- Relationship remains intact
- Organizations interests considered

Rules of principled negotiation:
- Separate people from issues
- Focus on your team members interest, not positions
- Invent as many options as you can for mutual gain
- Use objective standards and criteria instead of subjective opinions



Leading Teams: Managing Virtual Teams

Competencies for Members of Virtual Teams

Technologies for Virtual Teams

Guidelines for Virtual Teams