I was relaxing on my holidays in the USA. On a sunny morning Mohan, CEO of Grow Investment called me. I had completed a coaching assignment with Mohan about a year ago. In our conversation together, Mohan mentioned that he currently has a highly qualified, competent team reporting to him, however, he saw a lack of trust amongst his team members. As he knew that I have done team coaching for many leadership teams, he wanted to explore if team coaching would work for his top team and help to increase that trust among his members. We agreed that upon my return to India in the following two weeks, we would meet. In the meantime, I sent him an outline of my team coaching approach and a link ( https://youtu.be/1BjYg_S8n3U) to my interview on team coaching.

Mohan and I met in Mumbai.

In our face to face meeting, Mohan again mentioned that he was not happy that the degree of mistrust amongst his team members was increasing. He also noticed that there was a reduced speed of decision making and some potential business opportunities have been lost. As well as information sharing and cooperation amongst each other had also reduced. His team was increasingly focusing on “Me, my needs, and my goals”.

We discusssed in more detail my Team coaching framework (https://the-goodcoach.com/tgcblog/2022/2/7/an-award-winning-team-coaching-framework-developed-from-experience-and-shared-knowledge-by-pradip-shroff) and answered any questions he might have with my approach. Mohan agreed to my fees, the contract was focused on building trust amongst his team members and he asked me to start immediately.

What is Trust and what does it mean to Mohan’s team?

I began meeting each team member as part of my Team 360.  In addition to my usual questions that is set as part of the team 360 (as described in my team coaching frame work), I added the following questions around trust so that I could try and work out a uniform language of trust with them in our future sessions.

I asked the following questions to the team

1. What is trust?

2. What do you mean by trust?

3. Who do you trust? Who do you consider trust worthy

4. What behaviours of an individual reflect trust?

5. When would you not trust and indivudual?

6. What behaviours of an individual refelect mistrust?

7. What can be done to regain broken trust?

After each meeting and looking at the variety of responses, I felt that it will be more useful to involve all the team members in the team session to churn this information and bring out the core learning. This way there will be total commitment of the team on the fundamental issue of what is trust and establish what does it mean to the team.

In the first  team session, we discussed growth opportunities for the business and key internal and external challenges as seen by the team. Among other things like resources, competitive compensations, trust among the team was clarly a major internal issue. We ended session one with the decision to drill more on the subject of trust.

Developing the tool for a measurement of Trust

I started the second team session by sharing trust as described  by Dr. Duane C. Tway, Jr.,

“Trust is the state of readiness for unguarded interaction with someone or something.”

I then opened up the discussion on trust as described in our scriptures. We agreed that trust, as explained in our scriptures, means consistency in “What I believe, What I say and What I do.” 

After everyone agreed what trust looked like for each of them, and as a team, I built upon this and connected their reflections of trust in the business environment.

I gave a brief talk on Blanchard’s ABCD of trust (Refrence: Trust Works!: Four Keys to Building Lasting Relationships by Kenneth H. Blanchard, Cynthia Olmstead, Martha Lawrence).

• ABLE: Perceived as competent in your role, have the skills and capabilities.

• Believable: Team members feel that you are honest, open, and fair 

• Connected: Care about team members, humane and can relate to team members’ challenges

• Dependable: Consistent about integrity and accountability to your team

Next, I got each member of the team to work on the seven questions, which would also be later shared in more detail in my individual discussions with them. Each one was given 10 minutes to write down answers to all questions. Once everyone had written down their response to the questions, the team was broken down into two smaller teams. The task for both teams was to discuss everyone’s response to the questions and develop a common view that best represents the team.  Once both teams completed the task, they met as one large team and shared their common view. I moderated the session.

I saw that the summary of discussions was very rich with several behaviours that can be monitored through a simple exercise of whether they can observe these behaviours being displayed, as either a Yes or No. I then immediately develped a list of 21 questions and made a matrix that was shared with each of the team members to embed their insights as part of their professional developmental growth. (See Fig 1)

Using the Trust Assessment matrix.

When I saw the “completed” matrix again, I recognised that it was a very powerful tool. It provided direction for actions that can help improve trust among team members.

The instructions were simple. Each team member was asked to give his/ her view on a team member and answer Yes or No against each question. One by one, repeat the same for all team members. In the last row, calculate total number of “Yes” against each question. Similarly, in the last column, calculate the number of Yes for that person. The maximum number of yes against anyone will be 21.

• The total number of yes against a member is the score for trust A has in B.

• The total number of Yes against all questions is the trust score for the question.

• The total number of Yes against all members will be the overall Trust score.

I then discussed their matrix with each one in their next individual session.

In Figure 2, I have given an example of a completed assessment matrix.

Goal for improving trust is now easy – Increase the number of yes’s in the matrix.

This matrix confirmed itself to be very powerful because it provided each of them with some objective measurements that enabled them to choose where they wanted to focus their efforts. It could also be analysed in many ways and used in their personal sessions to develop individual action plan. 

For example

i)   “A” can decide to focus on individual relationship based on importance for his/ her job. Look at questions where he/ she has marked “No” for a team member. Develop action plan to make it yes.

ii)   “A” can look at each questions and count number of yes against that question. Select one or more questions and make action plan to increase number of yes.

Improvement journey and outcome

Getting the buy-in to use the trust matrix at the team level was challenging as one of the members (Jeet[1]) refused to participate in the assessment matrix to start with. I had a choice of whether to use the Trust assessment matrix, and whilst more trust-building needed to be done at the team level, I decided that discussions on trust matrix assessment would still be intrinsically valuable to each of them in their personal sessions only. This also meant that any progress and follow-up scores would also not be discussed in the remaining team session.

I reiterated this again in the personal session, as I wanted to assure each one that I will not disclose his/ her score to anyone. I explained that I am a professional and for me, my professional ethics and integrity is of utmost importance, and they would also be able to observe this in our personal and team sessions together.  Everyone except Jeet agreed to actively use the assessment matrix and share their scores.  For Jeet, they felt that trust is earned and should not be measured; either you trust or do not trust. It is either 0% or 100%. I decided to respect his decisions, and he, in turn, agreed to use the assessment matrix but not share the results with me.

Every month, everyone was asked to reassess their Trust score for each member and re-calculate their overall trust score. Their trust was then plotted on a graph for easy visualisation and ongoing progress (for example, See Fig 3) This simple visual graph and assessment matrix was used in all subsequent personal sessions alongside their other goals to help develop their action plan month after month.

[1] Names changed for confidentiality

My contract was for a total 8 sessions. By the time we reached 5 sessions, one of the team members decided to leave for better prospect. When we had completed 6 sessions, another 3 team members had decided to resign as they had received a significantly higher salary elsewhere.  This change also coincided with the annual bonus and salary increases announced that month, and those who left were very ambitious and were expecting a much higher increase.

Mohan and I also discusssed the progress as part of our overall contract review at that time too. Overall improvement in the score had moved upward, session after session for every one.  Some moved faster and some moved slower. We also agreed that with a smaller team, the original objective set for this contract has also shifted as a result of the changes and continuing the team coaching as-ismay not be good idea. We closed the assignment.

My learnings and reflections

• Trust can only be earned. It must be built brick by brick.

• Each had different ideas on what could be/ needed to be done. Developing a tailored trust assessment matrix made it easier for everyone to know what they needed to do and what they needed to do to earn trust.

• At the start of the program, most team members felt that “I am doing my best; it is the other person who is not trustworthy”. I challenged that view in personal sessions.

• Partnering and participating in the development of the assessment matrix helped. When each one saw his/ her matrix and saw their number against each of the “NO”,  it became easier for them to consider in our personal sessions what to accept as their limitations and overconfidence bias. That then motivated them to make an effort to build trust and not wait for the other person to start.

• I could not convince the one member who did not want to share their trust score. On one hand, he was very open with me on all other issues, but on trust he was not willing to move from his views. I was not sure if he would ever change, or I should have suggested that they consider engaging another coach.

• It was unfortunate that the coaching assignment had to be closed due to resignations.

Connect with Pradip Shroff on Linkedin

Pradip is a certified CEO Coach based in Mumbai, India. In last 9 years as CEO Coach, He has completed 55 Senior level Executive coaching assignments. He has done 4 Leadership Team coaching Programs. He has guided 30 Coach Interns of PG program in Executive coaching.

Pradip Shroff brings over 40 years of business experience, with 25 years at CEO level. He brings a strong business acumen and strategic thinking. He is very analytical and innovative in developing solutions. Pradip uses his corporate experience in his coaching assignment. He is a Case author in CFI's book "Are you ready for the corner office”.