AGILE IN ACTION

Tuesday, 13 December 2005

Teamwork and trust

Posted by Simon Baker
Tags: people, trust

Jeffrey Phillips says it’s a matter of trust.

In a team, for each person to commit fully to the team, to the project, and to their work, they must be able to trust that those around them are doing their jobs well. Trust is earned. In part, trust is built by delivering on the commitments made to others. Say what you’ll do and then do what you said.

When a person doesn’t deliver on her commitments to the team, trust starts to falter and the whole team is effected because they placed their trust in each other. The team’s effectiveness begins to diminish, their productivity decreases, and consequently their morale drops. In a previous post I asked can trust be restored once it’s lost? If it can’t, the team enters a downwards negative spiral.

As Jeffrey says, each team member should start out by thinking “I want to work where I can fully plug-in to the culture and think that my belief in other people and their determination to do the right thing and to work as hard and as effectively as possible is the same as mine”.

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