Mutual trust:
a cause, a consequence and
an indicator of defensive
interactions
Mutual trust or reliance is a critical team
success factor: every time I have coached a
team to help improve its performance, low
mutual reliance is abundantly mentioned.
But
-
some of them indicate that low mutual
reliance is a cause for their team
problems
-
some others see low mutual reliance as a
consequence
-
everybody believes that low mutual
reliance is a key issue
-
and almost nobody knows what to do
about low mutual reliance !
So we will first review a definition in a
team context, then discuss how reliance is
intimately connected to effective interactions
and finally point towards the techniques to do
something concrete about low mutual
reliance.
I have chosen the following definition:
Mutual trust
is a shared belief that you can depend on each
other to achieve a common purpose.
In a team, this shared belief is
coming from a feeling of predictability
that I can depend from the others.
And this feeling of predictability derives from
being above the constructive
interactions tipping point, not only "in the instant" but also
consistently over time. Mutual reliance is a consequence of constructive
interactions
.
And this shared belief provokes a readiness to
collaborate. When our readiness to collaborate is low, within a team
or across teams, we spend a lot of time and energy to patrol our
boundaries to avoid any threatening intrusion. We even anticipate
potential threats and manipulate information to avoid these - real
or imagined ? - threats. So low mutual reliance leads also to defensive
interactions.
Mutual reliance is thus strongly correlated -
both a cause and a consequence - with effective
interactions. And we feel low mutual reliance
quite clearly, as confirmed by recent advances in brain
sciences. So collective feeling of
low mutual reliance is a good indicator of
defensive interactions in a team. Just ask
yourself: "Do I believe that I can depend
on the other team members to achieve our common
purpose ?"
What can we do concretely to reduce
mistrust in a team ?
Return from
mutual
trust to root team building
issues
Return from mutual trust to
team building
results
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