Promoting Trust and Collaboration in Team Settings

Introduction
Like the assassination of President John F. Kennedy or the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, most Americans who were alive when these events happened remember what they were doing and where they were when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded on January 28, 1986, killing all seven crew members aboard including the first civilian schoolteacher in space. Following this national disaster, some observers suggested that a lack of mutual trust and collaboration among the mission team contributed to this fatal outcome. The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of the tools that leaders can use to build trust and relationships, explain how leaders use storytelling to build trust and relationships, and to provide a representative example of a story that could be used to achieve these desirable outcomes with the Space Shuttle Challenger team.
Promoting collaboration and trust
According to Goman (2014), organizational leaders can use a variety of tools to promote trust and strengthen relationships, foster collaboration and employee engagement with their work. Although every organizational setting is unique and will require different combinations of these tools, all of the following can help achieve these goals in the general manner described below:
· Recognizing and countering silo mentalities: This tool can be used to promote greater information-sharing practices among team members to reduce power struggles and improve productivity and mutual trust.
· Creating an organizational culture that places a high priority on the “human element” in communications and knowledge sharing; Although various technologies play a fundamental role in facilitating communications, successful collaboration typically requires changes in the organizational culture.
· Effect meaningful organizational change using collaboration: Achieving meaningful changes in organizations requires the talents, expertise and knowledge of more than just a single individual, so it is vitally important to use coloration as a strategy for organizational change initiatives.
· Develop a shared purpose and vision among team members: This tool is perhaps one of the most important for promoting trust and strengthening relationships because it provides the overarching objective for a team supported by a shared view of this outcome that can motivate team members to greater efforts.
· Draw on the respective strengths that a diverse group provides: While the adage “think outside the box” has become cliché, the improved problem-solving that can result from drawing on the individual strengths of each team member makes this an important tool for leaders in organizations of all sizes and types.
· Facilitate the development of relationships among team members: Forging improved relationships among team members does not just happen, but rather requires the provision of sufficient time for individuals to get to know each other and to develop a mutual understanding concerning the team’s project.
· Focus on building trust among team members: Informed collaboration represents the foundation of trust building and is integral to breaking down silo mentalities and eliminating skepticism and mistrust among team members.
· Ensure that body language is aligned with verbal communications. Team leaders must avoid using body language that communicates a different message than the one intended; although not specified by Goman (2014), this step may require taking into account various cross-cultural differences concerning body language (e.g., Thais do not like the bottom of feet pointed at them).
Another valuable tool that can be used to promote trust and strengthen relationships, foster collaboration and employee engagement is storytelling as discussed further below.
Storytelling and its effect on collaboration and trust
Effective interpersonal communications are essential to the success of virtually any type of organizational team (Snarski, 2017). Likewise, mutual trust among team members is also a key ingredient for team success (Edinger, 2014). Team leaders can use storytelling to build trust and improve interpersonal relationships by communicating a key theme or moral that highlights the constraints faced by team members and how they can be overcome (The Arial Group, 2011). Although stories are not always required or appropriate, there are some circumstances in which they represent a valuable addition to a team leader’s repertoire of team-building tools. For example, personal stories can be used to describe an event that helped clarify individual values, so-called “personal business” stories can be used to describe instances of overcoming seemingly overwhelming challenges, and general business stories can be used to describe how organizational problems were resolved in the past (The Arial Group, 2011).
Story that a leader would tell the Space Shuttle Challenger team
When I was a kid of about 8 or 9 years old, one of my favorite books was about the Wright brothers. Although I cannot remember the title of the book, it was written for young readers and many of the anecdotes about the Wright brothers related by the author fascinated me to the point where I still remember them today. It turns out that Orville and Wilbur enjoyed a loving home where both parents were keenly interested in their dreams and helped them become the aviation pioneers remembered by history.
Two formative events in the Wright brothers’ childhood in particular served to guide their adult lives in ways that contributed to their professional success. The first event was the time their father brought them home a working toy helicopter that actually flew using a rubber band for power. This simple but novel device clearly sparked the Wright brothers’ interest in human flight, but it took a second event to help them achieve this aviation first. When the Wright brothers were trying to design a working aircraft, their mother overheard their planning and counseled them to “put their plans on paper so they would know what they were doing.” Ever since I read that advice, it has been my personal belief that “a short pencil is better than a long memory” and I too tend to put my plans on paper first. Not surprisingly, the Wright brothers were scrupulous in recoding their thoughts on paper after that advice, and their meticulous record-keeping helped them design their first aircraft prototypes.
One of the more interesting outcomes of their mother’s guidance was the fact that the Wright brothers carefully calculated how much weight their prototype aircraft could carry and then actually designed a motor and built it that was within the weight parameters. When I read this, I was amazed. Here were two young men who not only designed an aircraft, they built the entire thing themselves – including the motor! This was truly remarkable to me. At the time, my friends and I could barely fix a broken roller skate and here were two young Americans taking matters into their own hands by following their dreams and their mother’s advice to achieve historic greatness. This outcome would not have been possible, of course, if the Wright brothers had distrusted each other or refused to share valuable knowledge about their project, a fact that underscores the need for building trust and collaborative practices among team members..
References
The Ariel Group. (2011). Storytelling [PDF]. Executive Essentials eBook.
Edinger, S. (2014, February 25). For leaders, relationships trump expertise. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottedinger/2014/02/25/for-leaders-relationships-trump-expertise/#6721021d6414.
Goman, C. K. (2014). Collaborative leadership. Leadership Excellence Essentials, 31(4), 35.
Snarski, R. D. (2017). Communicating clearly in the information age: A guide to easy and effective writing for employees, students, writers and anyone who uses the written word. Tampa, FL: Author.