Lesson 2: Team Processes

Trust Building

Trust is, perhaps, the most influential factor in a team working together. Trust allows team members to interact and depend on each other. Making and keeping team commitments (i.e. showing up at meetings and completing assignments as scheduled) or informing team members in advance why attendance or completion is not possible builds trust. It simply means that team members will do what they say they will do, when and how they said they will do it.

However this becomes complicated as different cultures express answers in different ways. For example, Japanese have several ways to say "no" without actually saying using the word "no". If a team member is unaware of this he or she may become frustrated or not understand that a "no" answer has been given. Another limiting factor is that of non-verbal communication communicated through body language and gestures. The image shown on visual virtual communication technologies restricts what is shown or seen. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, to pick up on non-verbal cues.

Building trust becomes considerably more difficult on a GV team than a co-located team because of the lack of face-to-face interaction. As team members are not in physical contact with one another on GV teams, three suggestions to start building trust are (see next three pages):

1. Conduct a Shopping Mall Test of your team members.
2. Develop a personal profile for the team.
3. Make a 5-minute phone call.