Teams and companies grow, change and mature but people’s interpersonal connections don’t follow this trend. While the founding team knows each other well, as the business evolves, trust can be given to only a selected few. A challenge business leaders have to overcome is to keep strong connections alive between teams. Thus they need to build trust within the company. This type of cultural leadership is the extra piece that can set a company apart, and allow it to scale effectively.
A 2012 survey by the Interaction Associates showed that high performing teams have a deeper level of trust amongst their members than bad performing teams. This report also highlighted that overall levels of trust have declined since 2009. So, how can you set your company apart and increase employee retention? How can you increase the effectiveness of multi-disciplinary teams in making great products?
You can’t create trust in an instant
On-boarding procedures are a great start to build connections early on between team members. But new employees tend to focus on their immediate colleagues and don’t always get a chance to connect outside their department for long periods. So any chance to make new connections is lost from the early days.
Imagine the first time two colleagues have to work on a critical project. This is definitely not the time to start building trust. You want your team to work effectively and efficiently as soon as possible, and this means putting a framework to build connections earlier.
So, how can you create this environment?
It all starts with the right conversations
Work socials aren’t always comfortable. Team activities (like a movie night) don’t always involve wider conversations outside immediate peers.
This is where non-work related conversations and activities help. They cut away from any power dynamics of experience and company structure, and exist instead to get people talking together, sharing knowledge and learning. People like stories. And people like hearing about other people’s experiences.
Long term interests like sports and music are great topics of discussion for more casual groups on intra-company channels like Slack and HipChat. Knowyourcompany.com allows shorter notes on a variety of topics as well, engaging the entire company with a casual question each week. Simply asking for recommendations for books, restaurants and films can kick start deeper conversations.
Focused team events can create trust faster
For a quicker result, focused team activities can provide people common goals in the here and now. Treasure hunts will get ad-hoc teams collaborating and interacting. They let groups who may normally interact daily at work forge new trust bonds as they work together to defeat the challenges set by the hunt setter. A team will have to make small, but important commitments to each other during the event. By these small actions, team members are showing by doing, which means they can be trusted. Actions are far stronger than words for building vital connections and trust that company’s success relies on.
Enigmatic Events design custom social experiments and interactive events to create better company cultures from within by building trust and collaboration between teams. Discover our team building packages (http://www.enigmaticevents.com/victoria-events/), and let us show you how we can help you create a stronger, more connected company.