Trust building activities to consider for your team

Building trust among your team members is imperative to helping your team reach goals and accomplish projects successfully. Building a cohesive team will assist you and members with the ability to express their true purpose and aim.

When team members have confidence in the dependability, intention, and authenticity of the other members, trust has developed. Once trust develops it makes it easier to communicate the team's purpose and achieve the aim. Since real trust can only be developed from experience, there are ways to speed up the trust development process.

Trying the following trust building activities can help build trust in your team and improve performance.

1. Have a Saturday Retreat

Spend a Saturday morning together brainstorming innovative ways to reach goals for the quarter. To make if fun, ask each member to bring their favorite pot luck breakfast or lunch dish that they'd like to share. Have the event off work grounds, in a neutral and comfortable place, and remove any employee/employerhats at the door. If feasible, hire an outside facilitator to lead the retreat who is qualified to lead diverse teams. This may enhance the sense of importance of the retreat and neutrality.

2. Have monthly group roundtable discussions

This can be done by telephone via teleconference if there are distance issues or in person if not. The roundtable discussion should be time limited depending on how many are in the team. Each member will be given a specific amount of time, three to five minutes to say anything regarding the projects to be accomplished and those in progress. So new members can feel free to observe, do not require members to talk unless they choose. Generally there is no problem finding people to talk. Alternatively this can be a question and answer session where the team leader or coach answers questions for the members about various projects and tasks.

3. Reward commitment

When commitment is rewarded and appreciated, trust will flourish. Follow through on commitments builds trust because when the team experiences positive results, trust is built.

There are many other types of exercises and trust building activities that are common for teambuilding, but many of them don't work as well as activities that are focused around work. Exercises outside of the context of work can actually create more disconnect in the workplace, especially when the team sees no relevancy to the purpose and aim of the company and practical application of what they are learning in the workplace. Therefore, make sure if you hire a trained coach or facilitator, that he or she is well versed in your team's purpose and workplace environment.

The point of the activities is to provide communication and cooperation opportunities for the team to build trust. These are just a few simple examples of how it doesn't take much to build trust, just some focused and quality human interaction time.

About the Author

Award winning author, Debra J. Slover's leadership expertise stems from 18 years directing a state youth services program, experience organizing 20 state and national conferences, and running her own consulting firm for over six years. Her website ishttp://www.leadershipgardenlegacy.com

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