When working with company leaders to build high-performing teams, I share my mantra, “Culture is created by default or by design.” This means that either a culture’s values and expectations are clearly defined, designed, lived and reinforced daily or the culture just sort of bubbles up from the depths of who-knows-where, creating itself. As leaders and managers I think that we can all agree that defining what we want our organization’s culture to be and then taking steps to achieve and reinforce that design is a much better alternative than leaving it up to chance. It is hard to manage chance.
In our capitalistic society where we have seen a trend of greed-fueled profits being created at all costs, it is now more important than ever to deliberately add the value of trust to our teams. We have good teams but we want to make them really great high-performing teams. What makes the difference between good and great? In a word, it’s Trust. It is hard for people to perform at their very best when there is an absence of trust and a feeling of always looking over your shoulder while working with team mates.
Teams that lack trust tend to exhibit these behaviors:
- Spreading gossip as truths with the intention of hurting others
- Creating a scapegoat: someone to take the blame for the team problems
- Creating a scapegoat: someone who becomes the center of team jokes
- Deliberately hiding or misconstruing information
- Showing a lack of respect for others demonstrated through words, actions or both
