One of my seminars is a “minimizing team conflict and increasing team cohesiveness by communicating” session. I share how our brain hijacks can impede our rational thought and our communication. This also ties into trust … when trust between team members is nonexistent, communication becomes guarded and vague. As a result, team members do not open their thoughts and thought processes up to others. The perception of ulterior motives can run rampant. Groupthink can prevail and disgruntled employees can be the result.
Having trust between team members does the following:
- allows the team to graduate from the ‘storming’ stage and progress into the ‘performing’ stage
- leads to respect for each other, including actions, behaviors, thoughts and achievements
- allows team members to be open to suggestions without becoming defensive and less fearful in having their weaknesses exposed
How do we get trust? Realizing that each of us has our own way to communicate and our own thought process. Understanding the need to analyze, process and examine information ranges from the minutia level to the 50,000 foot view helps us understand the questions we may be asked.
Each of us has our own perspective. Our perspective is our reality.
It’s not what they said, it’s what you think you heard.
