Exploring the principles of trust with sixty product leaders
I was humbled to conduct a trust building workshop at RadSummit this year where I was able to run a workshop that dove deep into how people think of trust in their workplace. Before I talk about the workshop, if you’re not familiar with RadSummit, please check out this amazing product conference. Set deep in the mountains of the front range in Colorado, RadSummit is a no-devices, camp-style conference with equal time in nature, and product development workshops run by industry leading designers, product managers, and engineers.
My workshop borrowed heavily from the seminal team working playbook, Liberating Structures. I leveraged the 1–2–4-All technique to set my attendees on the path of understanding three major ideas: How might I trust myself more, I how might I trust others more, and how might others trust me more.
1–2–4-All is a technique that engages diverse groups with time and space to reflect, collaborate, and socialize in ways they’re comfortable with. We started the session with everyone reflecting on the three questions solo, writing down one idea per sticky note. Next, we formed pairs to discuss our alignment, or find new insights we hadn’t realized. Finally, we formed 4-people teams to find even more alignment and new realizations.
I bet you’re wondering where the “All” part comes in. Well, it’s this article! I kept each team’s post-it’s from the sessions and what you see below are the synthesized insights that I gathered from those who attended my sessions.
In no particular order, here are the patterns I pulled out of my work from 60 cross-industry, cross-functional leaders who are building software today.
Include Others . Create shared experiences that invite others into the process of brainstorming and decision making but make it a point to align on outcomes, not implementations. By inviting others to participate in a shared experience you are lowering the barriers to collaboration, and showing you’re willing to make room for others in your process. Books like Gamestorming and Liberating Structures are fantastic windows into showing how to include others in your work.
Transparency of process. Being open to walking others through the process, goals, key stakeholders, and motivations that drive your work is a way to build trust with your colleagues; in short, tell the story. Closely related to including others, telling the story of your thought process and execution takes into consideration those who haven’t been with you for the entire journey.
Not only will storytelling help you improve how you articulate your work, but it will pull back the curtain on your process, sharing potential best practices, or things to avoid. A great book on this subject is Articulating Design Decisions.
Assume positive intent. Believe that others have done their best work, acknowledge your personal biases, ask questions, and listen before reacting. Benevolence is a trait that means you’re open to differences, as well as seeing things from many perspectives. Sometimes we miss opportunities to include others, or are constrained in ways that prevent it. It’s not often the case that someone is trying to undermine you, they simply want to be heard, seen, and included.
Enablement. Trust in others’ abilities, as they have their own way of knowing how to solve the problems ahead of them. We can all lead by saying “I trust you to do what’s right” and let go of the outcomes that are tightly bound to how you would do something. There is always more than one way to solve a problem. By creating a culture that delegates responsibilities in a way that aligns with people’s passions and interests, we enable others to learn, and lead.
Self-Reflection. Getting into the cycle of reflecting on your interactions and learning from them is a way to build confidence in yourself and work. Committing to continuous improvement will help you learn from mistakes, but what might be more important is that documenting your successes gives you space to appreciate what works! Celebrate times your intuition was right, or when you accomplished something noteworthy. A weekly self-retrospective, or a quick check-in with your feelings about the week helps keep an eye on what’s slipping, moving forward, and what you’ve accomplished.
Share your experience. It’s time to acknowledge your imposter feelings, and tell them to fuck off. Believe in your own abilities and know you have the experience and intelligence needed to not only do your job, but share how you’re doing it. When we share our unique experience we start a conversation about where our work intersects with someone else’s needs. It’s time to stop the over analysis and kindly assert your unique point-of-view, and see where it connects with others. In getting into this habit, we gradually tease out our superpowers.
Initiate Quality Time. Taking the initiative of deepening the relationships around you, builds confidence as well as personal rapport with those around you. Are you having some trouble understanding, or collaborating with someone? Ask them out for coffee. Do you enjoy being around one of your teammates? Go out to dinner. Ask questions about their goals, or what their biggest struggles are. Can you use your voice to amplify something they deserve help or celebration for? By getting to know those around you, and what matters to them, it humanizes them and helps you build listening skills that in turn build trust.
Ask for help . We all experience blockers, sometimes they’re bureaucratic, other times it’s ourselves. Regularly asking for help getting unblocked, or talking through a challenging scenario with a trusted advisor gets us into the habit of seeking feedback. Conversely, requesting feedback in the form of what you could do more, or less of is another way to practice the vulnerable act of asking for help.
Follow through — Set honest and realistic promises, and follow up on them. When you can consistently follow through on what you talked about doing, it can’t help but set the expectation that your word can be trusted. Thinking a timeline will slip? Did you forget to factor in a big part of the work, take the initiative to reset the expectations by communicating your plan. Remember, transparency of process!
Focus less on assumptions — Assumptions are the destroyer of trust and respect, and among the most damaging workplace behaviors. When we trade in assumptions too frequently, our relationships and products suffer. Here’s a quick way to check in on something that you’re thinking, have you seen qualitative or quantitative evidence that backs up your assumption? If not, then you might be assuming too much about a given scenario. As real as assumptions can seem, sometimes they’re simply not true.
This list isn’t meant to be comprehensive, but it does represent the headspace of sixty talented people one weekend in the Rockies, when they had the time to step back and think deeply about how trust is built.
This is why we reflect on principles like trust, the landscape can change for us and what was once a time we didn’t trust ourselves enough to share our expertise, becomes a season of renewed confidence in sharing what we know. Whatever the case is for you, I hope that in the future you find reasons trust yourself more, trust others more, and for others to trust you more.
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