Your team is experiencing a lack of trust. How can you use functional training to build it up?

1 Assess your team's needs

Before you design any functional training program, you need to understand your team's current situation, goals, and challenges. What are the tasks and roles that your team needs to perform? What are the skills and knowledge gaps that hinder their performance? What are the sources of conflict or misunderstanding that erode their trust? You can use various methods to assess your team's needs, such as surveys, interviews, observations, or feedback sessions. The more you know about your team, the more you can tailor your functional training to address their specific needs.

2 Choose relevant scenarios

Once you have identified your team's needs, you can choose scenarios that simulate the real-life situations that your team faces or will face in the future. The scenarios should be relevant, realistic, and challenging enough to engage your team and test their skills and knowledge. For example, if your team works in customer service, you can create scenarios that involve dealing with different types of customers, complaints, or requests. If your team works in project management, you can create scenarios that involve planning, executing, or monitoring a project. The scenarios should also reflect the diversity and complexity of your team's tasks and roles.

3 Facilitate collaborative learning

The next step is to facilitate collaborative learning among your team members during the functional training sessions. Collaborative learning is a process where learners work together to achieve a common goal, share ideas, solve problems, and give and receive feedback. Collaborative learning can foster trust in your team by creating a positive and supportive learning environment, enhancing communication and coordination, and promoting mutual respect and understanding. To facilitate collaborative learning, you can use various strategies, such as assigning roles and responsibilities, providing clear instructions and expectations, encouraging participation and interaction, and giving constructive feedback.

4 Evaluate and follow up

The final step is to evaluate and follow up on the outcomes and impacts of your functional training program. Evaluation is important to measure the effectiveness and efficiency of your functional training, as well as the satisfaction and engagement of your team members. You can use various tools to evaluate your functional training, such as quizzes, tests, surveys, or interviews. Follow up is important to reinforce and sustain the learning and trust that your team has gained from the functional training. You can use various methods to follow up on your functional training, such as providing ongoing support and coaching, reviewing and updating the scenarios, or creating new opportunities for learning and collaboration.