High-performing teams and trust via vulnerability

I start this blog with a thought experiment… think back to the time when you were working in a team, and it felt connected; communication just flowed.

How to build high-performing teams through trust and vulnerability

If you are not so fortunate, then think of a time when you have been with a group of people doing something for a common goal. When you knew everyone was working with you and not against you. You’re focused on the job at hand, and you know everyone has your back, almost cult-like with your own culture, use of language and insider jokes.

This is what a trust-based high, performing team feels like.

Now on the other side of the spectrum, think of a time when you felt unsafe. You focused on staying afloat and watching your back than progressing with outcomes, communication was complex, and you felt like you couldn’t speak up these are the symptoms when there is a lack of trust within the team.

Of course, many factors make a team work, but for this blog, I am focusing on trust and, specifically, the power of vulnerability. Trust, like most things in life, is earned and not built overnight. It’s a slow process that a few key actions can speed up.

To build high-performing teams through trust and vulnerability, you should keep in mind the following:

• Everyone is peddling something

Irrelevant of how successful someone is or how externally they are achieving life ambition, the truth is they are still peddling something. The people who work in your team are no different. They are humans, and they have heavy stuff to deal with outside of work, and how they show up can be attributed to this.

Problems can be as vast as the universe, from financial relationships to addiction and the list goes on.

Remember, just because people do not talk about it doesn’t mean they are fine.

• Be a vulnerable leader

With the mindset that everyone is peddling something, in my experience, being a vulnerable leader helps form trust. You could say something as simple as, “I have x y z going on in my work/personal life. I wanted to share this with you if I show up to work, not 100%, then you know why.”

Just having that conversation with your team opens up a massive channel of trust, it builds empathy and gives permission for people also to be vulnerable and share what they are going through, and it brings the team closer together.

Word of caution, I am not saying you go full tilt and use your group for therapy, temper your vulnerability, be authentic and do not overshare. You are not asking your team for their help. You are asking for understanding.

• Share authority and delegate decision making

With almost two decades of agile transformation under my belt, trusting your team to do the right thing is one of the critical success factors. You can’t do it all, and you shouldn’t.

As a leader, you must enable your team, remove blockages and provide clarity and strategic direction. Not sharing authority and not delegating decision-making gives you a team that does exactly what you want them to do. They don’t feel they can speak up, and even if you ask them to crash your product into a wall, they will do it without question. It removes any collective intelligence. The team becomes lemmings-like and only executes instructions without any consideration of consequences.

As a leader, you are not there to make all the day-to-day decisions. You are there to provide air cover as the experts in your team figure out the best approach.

Word of caution – what I am not saying is give everyone in your team access to the nuclear codes and red button delegate tasks appropriate based on experience and provide support for where people get stuck. Delegating decision making builds the core muscle in the team to be autonomous, nurtures the future leaders and leads to shared trust, a highly engaged team and more innovative outcomes.

• Communicate your mistakes; celebrating failure starts from the top

I come across this term a lot, “celebrating failure”. What does it actually mean? Do we throw a party when we fail? Do we clap at the failure and so right on? The answer is no.

For me, celebrating failure is about the conditions you create in your organisation where failure can trickle to the top. People feel happy to share the failure across the organisation without any repercussions. There are many examples of companies that do it well, Pixar being one of them where they have a concept of the brain trust and learning loops.

I like this quote from Michelle Obama: “Failure is a part of the process. You learn to pick yourself back up.”

So how do you build that environment? You have to start as a leader, and it’s not easy. Start a team meeting with what you failed at last week and what you have learnt, then give your team time to adjust to the new format before asking them to participate. Permitting failure, your team will push beyond their limits, and the longer-term trend is more trust, greater productivity, more innovation and a strong team that learns from each other.

Pro tip: if your organisation’s response to failure is a witch hunt with pitchforks and flames. It would be best if you built an insular subculture in your team, and externally you need to be that heat shield and protect the team from the village folk.

• Express your emotions

Showing your team, you are human and have emotions is another important way to increase trust.

Good and bad emotions need to be expressed with a filter. I am not saying going hulk on your team is going to get them to trust you. What I am saying is share how you felt about something, how it made you happy, how your team handled the meeting or how you were disappointed with the outcome or how someone’s behaviour made you angry.

As with being a vulnerable leader, this is a delicate balance, and you have to temper your emotions without oversharing – allowing feelings in your team to drive friction. With candid feedback, friction is an excellent way of driving better understanding and bringing the team together.

I dedicate this post to all the great leaders I have had the privilege to work with and work for.