Buliding and Maintaining Trust: Trust Building

Trust Building Activites (1 and 2)

The following are six suggestions to help build and maintain trust among team members (Brake, 2008, Cross & Parker, 2004, Ting-Toomey & Chung, 2005, Lojeski & Reilly, 2008, Garton & Wegryn, 2006).

1. Non-Work Related Visiting:

   Schedule time prior to a meeting or immediately after to visit with international team members. Remember some cultures are a very work orientated and want to get the job done before socializing. Other cultures view socializing as part of the work process and do not begin work unless there is some social visiting first. You will need to be accommodating to both cultures.

   If you have a social network (i.e. Facebook, Skype, Google, etc.), where you have chat or personal videoconference ability, give your team member a quick call to say hello. This is the equivalent of meeting them in the hallway or stopping by their office to say hi. This does not need to be a long conversation just a quick hello before moving on to other tasks. If someone calls, it is good to answer, but if you are busy (i.e. in a meeting) politely let them know and call back at another time. Some social media (i.e. TokBox) allows you to leave a video message.

   Initially you should have a list of questions you can ask your international team member. This may include questions about their personal interests, activities from the past weekend, family, future goals or simply a good joke (as long as it is culturally appropriate). The point is you want to bring up something to talk about. Each topic is intended to be a conversation starter.

   While at first this may seem to be a forced conversation, as you have several conversations the questions will flow more naturally. If a cultural issue arises, ask them to clarify and explain to improve your understanding. These short conversations will enable you to build a stronger relationship and trust with each international team member. These conversations help develop relationships at more relaxed approach that leads to the ability to discuss real issues and problems more openly.

2. Self-disclosure:

   This refers to the aspects and activities of your life that you are willing to share. It has two dimensions, breadth and depth. The breadth refers to the number of topics about yourself you are willing to discuss. Some individuals and cultures are quite reserved. They do not wish to mix work and personal life. Others see work and personal life blended together. As you build trust, there becomes a greater breadth of topics people are willing to discuss.

   Depth refers to the layers of a topic that reveal emotional vulnerabilities. For example, one person may feel quite open about sharing an experience where he or she failed at a task as it reflects a learning and growth experience. Others may hesitate sharing such an experience as they feel it may reveal a weakness or present his- or her-self as incompetent.

   Stories are the stuff relationships are made of. As you share stories with international team members it invites them into your world where they can be trusted and give emotional support. It allows them to begin to see things from the perspective of your culture and provide insights to what each culture values. As you and your team members become more open with each other, the opportunity to build trust increases and there is the potential for greater collaboration.

   

   Sharing personal information is illustrated (right) by the Johari window (Griffin, 2008). When working on a GV team there is a great deal about oneself and the your team members that is in the blind, hidden and unknown windows. Through the process of sharing stories about oneself, successes, struggles, humorous situations, weekend activities, more information is moved to the open window. The goal is to move as much of the relationship to the open window as possible. Doing so will increase trust among team members.