It has been nearly a year now since I stepped into a new role in a new district. There have been so many refreshing, engaging, challenging, and joyful things to share about this new role, but it’s kept me so insanely busy over these past 11 months that I’ve not had any time — despite my best intentions — to do some reflective blog writing.
This evening I am challenging myself to jot down a few thoughts from my reflections on a conversation that I had earlier today in some training with our campus leaders. This won’t be a long post, but with the limited time I have these days — a few words are better than no words 🙂
One of our activities today asked us to consider what trust within a team looks like and what it doesn’t look like. Our conversation focused on how trust allows for a safe space for everyone to feel comfortable sharing ideas and asking questions, and I believe we would all agree that this is certainly one hallmark of a team that has established significant trust with one another.
But it also made me think about intentional language and how the use of language can help to build trust among colleagues and teams.
A simple example of this is how we might extend an offer of help to a colleague or team member.
We could say, “Do you need help with anything?”
Or…
We could say, “What do you need help with?” or “What can I help you with?”
Aside from some pickiness over the grammar in those second/third questions, think about how the first question and the two other questions are very different. The first question is a “yes or no” question and it allows the other person to simply reply “No, I’m fine… Thanks.” While it may be true that the other person does not need any help, I’ll admit that sometimes I will respond that way when asked this question even when I have a million things that you could easily help me with right at the moment. I would answer that way not because I don’t need help, but more likely because I don’t want to burden you.
It’s also an easy question to ask when one wants to appear helpful, but may be secretly hoping the other person will respond with “No, I’m fine… Thanks.” This motivation for using the question works against the development of trust among a team.
However, when we use one of the second questions we make an assumption (that the other person does indeed have tasks that they need help with), we don’t offer up an easy “yes or no” question for the other person to answer, and we make it very clear that we sincerely do want to provide help or support and that it is no burden for us. This type of question comes from a different place and helps to create those safe spaces that grow trust among teams.
What are some other ideas that come to mind around how the language we use helps to build trust among teams?