Maintaining Team Trust Through Guidelines Activity Guide

Skillsoft Blended Learning Resource

Maintaining Team Trust through Guidelines – Activity Guide

As a team leader, you can use some specific team-building strategies when trust is a problem. One of the strategies for restoring trust on a team once it's been broken is to develop guidelines for maintaining trust.

You can use this activity to help you and your team develop a guideline for dealing with trust issues.

Developing Guidelines for Maintaining Trust

Instead of falling back into the old culture of mistrust, team guidelines will help deal with re-offenders. The guidelines should give direction about what to do when someone on the team fails to keep a commitment and trust is undermined. They should also outline the process for regaining trust in the team and team members.

Action plan

An action plan might be a two- or three-step process to follow. The guideline might state that if someone fails to keep a commitment with another person, a meeting is held between them to work out the issue. In this type of situation, having a third party present is a good idea. If the meeting is between two team members, the team leader should be there. If the team leader is one of the two with an issue, another team member can act as an objective third party.

Rules for conflict management

This should include rules about how to speak and how to listen. Both parties should use good listening skills, such as keeping an open mind about what the other person is saying and not becoming defensive. You can practice active listening by paraphrasing the other person's concerns and asking more questions to make sure you fully understand.

Final resolution

Before the meeting is over, both parties must come to an agreement on how to proceed. The person who created the trust issue has to commit to the changes, and the one who was affected should grant amnesty. Both must be willing to trust again, with no holding of grudges, making sarcastic digs, or planning payback.

Activity Guide

Meet with your team to perform this activity. Explain the steps to develop a guideline for maintaining trust, and why you think you should do it. Then, together with your team, follow the steps in this activity to develop a guideline for maintaining trust.

Define the steps in the action plan you and your team will use to deal with trust issues.

Action plan

Steps / Description

Next, define rules that will be used to deal with conflict. How do you and your team expect the involved parties to behave? What actions are acceptable and unacceptable?

Rules

Rules / Description

Finally, describe how you and your team expect trust issues to be resolved. After following the action plan, what outcomes do you and your team expect?

Outcomes