Module 2 Building Relational Trust

Learning Intentions

Understand why high levels of trust are critical to organizational success.
Understand the way your behaviour, and the behaviour of others contributes to or undermines, trust.
Reflect on your own actions and the likely impact of those actions on the trust of others.

Success Criteria

You can articulate why trust is important in organizations.

You can articulate some concrete ways in which trust can be promoted in schools.

You can name some next steps for promoting trust in your leadership team by reflecting on Lencioni's model.

What is trust?

Vulnerability is the concept that underpins trust - we feel vulnerable if we feel we may be judged negatively by others.
In any situation, trust allows us to take risks that we otherwise would not if we did not trust the other person - we do not feel so vulnerable with people we trust.

Building interpersonal trust

1. Trust develops as we see people act in ways that we expect of them and diminishes when they act in ways we do not think appropriate e.g., for some people President Trump of the USA acts appropriately by calling out the status quo; for others, he is seen to act inappropriately and ‘un-presidential’.

2.Trust is diminished when people do not live up to our expectations.

3.Trust in a school is very dependent on the principal’s lead: how they build trust with, and how much they are trusted by community, teachers, staff, and students.

Bryk and Schneider research

This is a diagram illustrating a theory about how trust develops between individuals.

This is a diagram illustrating a theory about how trust develops between individuals. It is based on a longitudinal study of school improvement in several hundred Chicago schools. Schools reporting strong trust were three times more likely to improve results than those with weak trust. By the end of the study, schools with strong trust had a one in two chance of being in the improving group, while schools with weak results had a one in seven chance.

The four determinants are helpful because they represent things leaders can do to increase others’ trust in them. The determinants associated with trust are:

Respect – e.g., displayed by genuine listening to others
Competence – e.g., ability to fulfill expectations of the role
Personal regard for others – e.g., going beyond the role to caring about staff's personal lives, and going beyond the strict bounds of the job by going the extra mile for others
Integrity – e.g., doing as you say; walking your talk

The more the determinants are embedded in daily interactions / actions – the deeper the trust will be.

High relational trust lowers the sense of vulnerability that people feel and thus encourages them to take risks. It supports efficiency within the organisation because people do not have to wait for specific instructions when there is high trust. They can use initiative because they trust others not to judge them harshly if things do not go well despite best efforts.

Building trust within teams

This diagram is the work of Patrick Lencioni who focuses on how to build trust in teams while doing the work of improvement.

Absence of Trust - Essentially, this stems from team members' unwillingness to be vulnerable within the group. Team members who are not genuinely open with one another about their mistakes and weaknesses make it impossible to build a foundation for trust. Non-disclosure of real thoughts leads to inattention to details and the inability to problem solve.

This failure to build trust is damaging because it sets the tone for the second dysfunction: fear of conflict. Teams that lack trust are incapable of engaging in unfiltered and passionate debate of ideas. Instead, they resort to veiled discussions and guarded comments.

A lack of healthy conflict is a problem because it ensures the third dysfunction of a team: lack of commitment. Without having aired their opinions in the course of passionate and open debate, team members rarely, if ever, buy in and commit to decisions, though they may feign agreement during meetings.

Because of this lack of real commitment and buy-in, team members develop an avoidance of accountability, the fourth dysfunction. Without committing to a clear plan of action, even the most focused and driven people often hesitate to call their peers on actions and behaviours that seem counterproductive to the good of the team.

Failure to hold one another accountable creates an environment where the fifth dysfunction can thrive. Inattention to results occurs when team members put their individual needs (such as ego, career development, or recognition) or even the needs of their departments or teams above the collective goals of the wider team.

Trust is a mediating influence to allow debate and better problem solving.

Caution:

Without trust, conflict becomes politics. With trust, conflict becomes about the pursuit of truth

Combating dysfunction in your team

In the face of low trust, (i) extend trust (ii) act in authentic ways… open agendas, show readiness to seek alternative views (respect), and show concern for others (regard).
If others are unwilling to challenge ideas seek their opinion; become a ‘truth seeker rather than a truth teller’ (Robinson).
If the team fear commitment, push to get clarity about issues out on the table and agreement about what the problem is and the causes. Ensure agreed actions are clearly understood by all (indicators, actions list, dates for tasks to be done.) Lencioni advises that you ‘mine for conflict’ by asking the quiet people or people who you do not feel are really putting their views on the table, to add their view. The concept of ‘weigh in and then buy in’ can be useful… in other words - Make your case openly but once the team has agreed, then get behind the decision.
- Leaders need to hold themselves and others accountable once agreement has been made. The behaviour overlooked today (e.g. failure to fulfill obligations as agreed or required) becomes the ‘standard’ accepted tomorrow.

Focus on the corporate good, vision and priority goals

What are we trying to achieve? Why are we doing that?

Group task: Leadership team dynamics

Consider the pyramid of Lencioni. Discuss and record your leadership team's views - does your leadership team really:

focus on your collective results (i.e., a clear and strong goal focus)?
openly confront disagreements about direction or strategy or the actions of team members?
push for clarity about the actions required of each of you?
mine for conflict - or avoid it?

Then name one priority behaviour that you need to focus on as a team and why that is a priority for you - in less than 100 words. You will make your submission after our webinar.

Please set your response out clearly as per the following example:

Focus on collective results: We think we are strong/weak at this because we ......

Openly confront disagreements: We find this difficult/easy to do because....

One priority behaviour we will focus on is.....