Tag Archives: Building relationships

04-Managing a project team, feedback, team dynamics, team roles, work plans

The Importance of Trust and How To Build it

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Often in our workplace we think of our success as being dependent upon our skills and ability to perform in a timely manner. I thought the same until I stumbled upon this article and it really changed my frame of mind. Honestly, now that I think about it, before my performance and skills even come into play, it is someone endowing trust upon me to even utilize my skills.

In undergrad I was taught that business is a system of integrated relationships of skilled people that are working to achieve personal and organizational goals. As this article points out, trust is at the center of every relationship.

I, like many of you, am constantly working on a project teams and in some cases, managing a project team. The author of the article Roger Dean Duncan states that “With high trust, teamwork is more of a reality than a hollow buzzword. Innovation is vibrant. Productivity tends to be strong and is typically more sustainable.”

This article begins by discussing what it really means to have trust. Later in the article Duncan begins to have a conversational interview with Barbara Brooks Kimmel, the executive director of Trust Across America. In the conversation Kimmel mentions a model that can be used to facilitate the earning of trust. She calls it the VIP Trust Model™.

Below are the attributes of the model to gain trust:

Vision and Values

Integrity

Promises

See article below for the full conversation on trust and how to use the VIP Trust Model.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/rodgerdeanduncan/2014/07/14/how-do-you-build-trust-in-a-trust-deficient-world/

team dynamics

People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

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Business success can be defined in many ways – achievement of a firm’s goals and vision, cost reduction, successful strategy implementation, meeting revenue goals, etc. Firm-wide, team based, or individual, not matter your goals or desired outcome, a key success factor is one’s ability to build strong relationships with colleagues, managers, clients and often competitors.

Ed Wallace’s Business Relationships that Last: 5 Steps for Transforming Contacts into High-Performing Relationships proposes that every relationship is built on a foundation of three essential qualities – Credibility, Integrity, and Authenticity.

  • Credibility – the quality that makes other believe in you, your words, and your actions
  • Integrity – being trustworthy in our actions and character
  • Authenticity – being truly genuine and honest with our clients about who we are and what we know

Each aligns with a core tenant and value of the EvMBA program – each difficult to teach or develop in any student (or employee). Each quality requires a level of self-awareness and reflection that can be easily lost in the core or elective MBA curriculum of finance, statistical modeling or product and brand management.

Wallace provides a framework for developing high-impact relationships and introduces a number of activities to spark your thinking about who your key relationships are, what “blockers” are currently holding you back, and actions to take to strengthen your key relationships in a proactive way.

It’s a good and quick read. (Maybe a good one for August, as it’s ~200 pages cover to cover)

Would love to hear your ideas (and actions) on how you build and develop relationships with key stakeholders, colleagues and acquaintances.