Trust, the Secret Ingredient in High Performing Team

What is the focus of your work these days?

I’ve worked in the technical leadership and engineering management area in the company in the past 2 years. I recently made my way back into the technical team, contributing to the technical roadmap and looking at how to scale our platform. 

What’s your goal for the talk that you're giving?

The goal is to introduce the idea that interpersonal trust is quite integral to team health. With my experience in coaching and discussing around team health with my direct reports in the past two years, there is a pattern where interpersonal trust has been neglected, especially when the teams are going fast and being pushed to deliver. 

Is there a sort of a symptom that's visible when that trust isn't there?

You're trying to get into the root cause of why the team is not moving forward and getting to the conclusion. When you get to the end of the investigation and you're thinking, why couldn't team member A trust team member B? You want to tell them to trust each other, when you know that it's ridiculous having that request in your head. There’s the sign where there is an element of interpersonal trust that's not either been acknowledged or it's been damaged.

Is there anything you want people to leave the talk with?

I hope the audience will walk away with the understanding that no one is an island. Being in a team helps us to have a sense of belonging in our work community.  In order to be in a healthy and high performing team, it’d need work and care from each team member.