Yvonne and I are in our 20th year of service with International Teams. It feels like yesterday we joined Kim Loney for our first trip into Eastern Europe, but as I look back I see many changes over the years.
One of the constants over these years is teamwork. When training new people with IT, I’ve often said that, “Long before teamwork was a management approach and long after the teamwork fad has faded, we at International Teams have been doing team.”
However, as you spend time living life on a team you discover it can be really tough! We know there are various types of teams but what they have in common is, that when it’s working, teamwork increases effectiveness exponentially!
Here is my personal, bottom line for teamwork effectiveness. That is, teamwork is built on trust. Full stop. People who choose to be trustworthy, come together as a team, with a mandate and they work hard together to build, preserve and when necessary, restore trust. That is my personal conviction and my goal, to build trust.
Go and build your team on trust!
3 comments:
thanks, neil. this is refreshing and important.
i heard john maxwell say that it can be almost impossible to fully rebuild deep trust once it has been significantly eroded. (his context may have been moral failure.) i'm wondering if you have seen cases of strong trust rebuilt from situations of almost complete failure re: trust?
Mark, many say that trust is earned, but I would say that trust is given. Once this gift has been violated, it can be tough to get back. It takes healing and if I'm the one who broke trust than I must start with seeking forgiveness. Then time is needed to heal the wound. Make sense?
yes, that makes sense.
i'm helped by your comment on giving trust. i've never thought much about this, or heard it expressed in any certain way, but just naturally i have "given people trust". i almost assume trust, at least at the start of a relationship. there are surely some basic things in place when i do this - i would be less likely to give trust to someone with a really bad reputation coming in, for ex. but i typically just trust people up front. this can get blurred, i suppose, if on my side i am TOO trusting of people; this could suggest a certain gullibility on my part. so i give trust, but then over time i think i intuitively assess the validity of that trust. something like that.
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