2.8. Working With Teams
A team is a collaboration of people with different personalities led by a person with a favoured leadership style. Tuckman’s team development model – Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, and Adjourning – is elegant and helpful in explaining team development behaviour. The model explains that relationships are established as the team develops maturity and ability and the leader changes leadership style. Beginning with a direct style, the leader moves through coaching, then participating, finishing with delegating.
Managing the interactions of the various personalities and styles is an important aspect of project management.
Trust
Trust is the foundation for all relationships within a project. Without a minimum level of trust, communication breaks down, and eventually, the project suffers in the form of increasing costs and slipping schedules. Often, when reviewing a project where performance problems have captured the attention of upper management, the evidence of problems is the increase in project costs and the slippage in the project schedule. The underlying cause is usually blamed on communication breakdown. With deeper investigation, the communication breakdown is associated with a breakdown in trust.
On projects, trust is the filter through which we screen shared information and the filter we use to screen the information we receive. The more trust that exists, the easier it is for information to flow through the filters. As trust diminishes, the filters become stronger, information has a harder time getting through, and projects that are highly dependent on an information-rich environment will suffer from information deprivation.
Contracts and Trust Relationships
A project typically begins with a charter or contract. A contract is a legal agreement that includes penalties for any behaviour or results not achieved. Contracts are based on an adversarial paradigm and do not lend themselves to creating an environment of trust. Contracts and charters are necessary to establish the scope of the project, among other things, but they are not conducive to establishing a trusting project culture.
A relationship of mutual trust is less formal but vitally important. When a person or team enters into a relationship of mutual trust, each person’s reputation and self-respect are the drivers in meeting the intent of the relationship. A relationship of mutual trust within the context of a project is a commitment to an open and honest relationship. Nothing enforces the commitments in the relationship except the integrity of the people involved. Smaller, less complex projects can operate within the boundaries of a legal contract, but larger, more complex projects must develop a relationship of mutual trust to be successful.
Types of Trust
Svenn Lindskold (1978) describes four kinds of trust:
- Objective credibility. A personal characteristic that reflects the truthfulness of an individual that can be checked against observable facts.
- Attribution of benevolence. A form of trust that is built on the examination of the person’s motives and the conclusion that they are not hostile.
- Non-manipulative trust. A form of trust that correlates to a person’s self-interest and the predictability of a person’s behaviour in acting consistent in that self-interest.
- High cost of lying. The type of trust that emerges when persons in authority raise the cost of lying so high that people will not lie because the penalty will be too high.
Creating Trust
Building trust in a project begins with the project manager. On complex projects, the assignment of a project manager with a high trust reputation can help establish the trust level needed. The project manager can also establish the cost of lying in a way that communicates an expectation and a value for trust in the project. Project managers can also ensure that the official goals (stated goals) and operational goals (goals that are reinforced) are aligned. The project manager can create an atmosphere where informal communication is expected and reinforced.
Informal communication is important for establishing personal trust among team members and with the client. Allotting time during project start-up meetings to allow team members to develop personal relationships is important to establishing the team’s trust. The informal discussion allows for a deeper understanding of the whole person and creates an atmosphere where trust can emerge.
Example: High Cost of Lying in a Project
Small events that reduce trust often take place on a project without anyone remembering what happened to create an environment of distrust. Taking fast and decisive action to establish a high cost of lying, communicating the expectation of honesty, and creating an atmosphere of trust are critical steps a project manager can take to ensure the success of complex projects.
Project managers can also establish expectations of team members to respect individual differences and skills, look and react to the positives, recognize each other’s accomplishments, and value people’s self-esteem to increase a sense of benevolent intent.
“Chapter 16: Working with Individuals and Teams” from NSCC Project Management by NSCC is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
