Can you beat trust into a team?

Being a leader of the team, what you more than often rely on is the toolkit - proven practices of things to do in certain situations, either from your own experience, training or research. Luckily, most of the companies understand that in order to be responsible for the set of people, you need to have experience, and even then, you need to have the support of training.

Still, at some point you stand in front of your team, alone, in this case for example a relatively new one, with several new people added, and as a first thing you will reach for the toolkit - what do you know?

Highly successful teams have one thing in common - trust.

Right, let's do this. Rumbling through the kit, tadaah, obvious solution - lets have an event. Team retreat.?

Now, let's put the meaning to the event, uniting people with the mutual goal. Purposefully finding team building games that will support this. Plan well, have a schedule for the day, logistics, games, eating together. If it's a two day event, then make sure that there is a plan for the next day too, as time is money, you cannot afford this to go to waste. These people are stuck together in a secluded place, no escape, and I as a leader can make this work sparing only a few moments for boredom, this also planned carefully.

This is what the experience says, right, we have all been in events like this, as participants and as leaders. And after the event gathering feedback and watching people in the back to the office mode, you know it works. So repeat the experience. Start planning a new event.

As a leader, it is so easy to fall into the trap of goals and solutions. Duckling hit, I just did that. Started to prepare for the event, found a place, far away in South Estonia (secluded place, no escape), asked to prepare games, connected people to create reliance and therefore boost motivation to do everything I had in mind.?

I. My plan. Goal of trust and team building.

Being so focused on the goal, I forgot what I strongly believe in - building relationships and how it works outside of the office, in the real world. And I just wrote about it in one of the articles, how could I have forgotten this?

Trap of the toolkit and experience division between being a leader and being a team member.?

Fortunately I am so lucky to have a team who will not hesitate to speak up and make decisions based on gathering information but also their understanding of their own feelings.

“No games, Kristina” - she said - “no agenda. We are not playing anything today”

This came from the person who was responsible for team building games. For a second, all I had was an exclamation mark in my head. And then I woke up. All the connections of my very own belief system came back.

To build a relationship it takes time. It takes awkward silence, boredom, searching for the topics, seeing each other, testing out. It's a weird process to see and be part of, but it's worth it.?

“Okay” I said. With a decision to trust her.

It was all that, and more.

And I came back with an addition to my toolkit that I treasure as most valuable so far.

To build a trusting team, you have to trust them first.?

If it means letting go of some things, the plans, the agenda… do it.?

P.S To our marketing and HR team: I am so sorry, but there are no pictures. No games. No speeches.?

P.P.S We did have fun in a weird way. We identified nerds. We spent hours of the night looking at the starry sky and formed constellations.