Leading Effective Teams

Explore effective teaming by focusing on what builds the best teams as follows:

What few people realise is that trust and believability are processed in the pre-conscious areas of the brain. – the limbic area – which serves as a gateway to cognition. Trust can be cultivated in us – learn how
Keep an open mind to avoid professional culture classes. When we come to things with an openness it has tremendous transformative qualities. Saying “I don’t know” is a power undefeated.
Design teams for human touch. Putting people at the centre means investing in the knowledge, skills and mindsets required to navigate the complexities of today and tomorrow.
Learn together. Team members get to know their current teammates through the lens of their strengths. From those ingredients, the team builds new habits and rituals to accelerate its members’ growth together in psychological safety through their work together. Apply the weekly check-in; frequent discussion with each person and with the team about where people can employ their strengths; and use of the above items to gauge progress, not for the purpose of accountability but, rather, for illumination and course correction.

Trust and believability are synonymous. We need both together, neither alone will do. What few people realise is that trust and believability are processed in the pre-conscious area of the brain – in particular the limbic area – which serves as a gateway to cognition. The limbic system processes information 80 000 times faster than the conscious cerebral cortex. The conscious mind can process only 126 bits of info per second and only 40 bits of human speech per second. Our senses can receive 10 million bits of input per second. The limbic area gives us an instantaneous reading on believability and trustworthiness.

When we reach out to strangers and acknowledge them in some way without expecting anything in return, this trust, in most cases will pay off in one way or another. Trust is something Bill Gates believes in, he says that “if you trust yourself and those around you so much that you give away 70% of what you own, it can only translate into profit.”

How to build trust:

Be relax and present during interactions. Sit down while interacting with others.
Don’t make any ‘time-urgent’ movements such as looking at your watch or cell to indicate that you are concerned about time or disinterested.

Trust is an emotional strength that begins with the feeling of self-worth and purpose. When we trust ourselves, we can extend this trust to others and receive it in return. Trust becomes a conductor for positivity. Michael Hammer, a business strategist says: “The overheads of distrusting or wary relationships are enormous”; and Tom Peters states that “Technique and technology are important. But adding trust is the issue of the decade”. Charles Handy asks us “How do you manage people whom you do not see and whom you cannot control or fire – because they may not be your employees?” The answer is short and strong: “By trusting them.”

It is obvious that there are many dimensions to building and sustaining trust. Each dimension as important as the next. When people don’t trust each other, when they ignore feelings and alter facts or anticipate ideas it may increase their vulnerability for misunderstanding and erroneous assumptions dramatically. There is evidence to suggest that business trust depends first and foremost on making emotional contact with one another.