Fresh Beginnings…
Who doesn’t love the promise September brings? It’s the second ‘start of the year’, complete with new resolutions in place as we return to the working routine. And with the summer sand firmly cleaned away, the damp and chillier mornings bring associated new season ‘looks’ in the fashion pages. New beginnings beckon for thousands of youngsters off to the promise of a new life at university, or a new school year with new stationary and, for many others, new jobs with new teams. For most, along with the excitement of the new or fresh start, comes some trepidation, nerves, even fear. This shows we care about what we are doing, about making a good first impression, about sustaining our hopes for the future.
At Bright Lead, we’re busy with our Games companies’ leadership development programmes revving up again after the summer leave period, and visiting schools to lead workshops as they start the new academic year full of promise for what lies ahead.
For most of us, starting the new course, job or role means building new relationships, or perhaps we are re-establishing existing relationships with a new dynamic as people join our team when others have left. The classic Tuckman model is relevant here, as the team is: forming – storming – norming – performing. The key leadership question is how to move through those stages very quickly, in order to get the team to ‘performing’ as soon as possible.
This links really well with Patrick Lencioni’s ‘5 Dysfunctions of a Team’, a classic leadership fable, and primer text for any Leadership Development Programme. Over the next few months I’ll look at each of the dysfunctions in turn. With the establishment of many new teams at this point of the year in mind, the first and most important dysfunction of a team is ‘the absence of trust’. And so, building and maintaining trust in a team is crucial to high performance and avoiding team dysfunction, and building trust in a team is the very first thing a new leader, or leader of a newly composed team, must do.
Every successful relationship is built upon this fundamental building block. It’s not something that a leader can ‘tick off’ on the to-do list as ‘team building trust complete’! Trust needs continuous nurturing and involves regular reflection and attention. Too often trust can be taken for granted, particularly when teams have worked together for a long time and individuals ‘know each other really well’. A complacency or laziness towards sustaining the relationships can set in, as it sometimes can with our personal relationships.
This new September start is a great time for us as leaders to reflect upon what else can be done to build trust in the relationships we have within and outside work in order that they continue to sustain us, maintain a high-performance culture and avoid dysfunction. Time spent building trust is never wasted.
Reflections:
What is trust like in your team and relationships currently?
What else can you do to build further trust with your colleagues / other important relationships?
What part can you play in displaying sufficient vulnerability that others will do likewise?