Engineering Inc. - May/June 2019 - 65

TEAM TRUST

To appreciate other people's opinions and ideas, team members
must trust one another. Chinowsky suggests that managers
can instill trust through collaboration. Engineering firms are
inclined to create very surface connections and not focus enough
on underlying activities that build professional trust and reasons
for working together.
"It may be easier to manage a project by breaking tasks down
into individual pieces and making sure someone is responsible
for each one," says Chinowsky. "But that relieves people of the
obligation of working together."
Instead, managers should look at what parts of a project foster
more interactions versus individual actions. "If you can build
trust and open communications, that builds collaboration and
makes people more invested in the solutions," he says.
To help nurture collaboration, Wright-Pierce incorporated
Skype for Business, enterprise software that provides real-time
instant messaging, Voice over Internet Protocol, video conferencing and other shared services. "These tools have brought
great value to people, so they bring team members together virtually and allowing for greater productivity," says Taggart.
Stopper, who manages a 10-person team of trainers for
campus initiatives at the University of California, Berkeley,
advocates Ken Blanchard's Building Trust program for managers,
often referred to as the ABCD Trust Model as one of the models
groups can use when thinking about trust in their organization.
It comprises four elements that, Blanchard's research shows, help
leaders and team members learn how to build trust in the workplace and how to repair it when it has been broken:

1. Able: demonstrates confidence
2. Believable: acts with integrity
3. Connected: cares about others
4. Dependable: honors commitments
"Own your expertise; seek out, value and respect the insight
of others; say what you are going to do, and then you do it,"
says Stopper, summarizing the Building Trust program's essence.
Employees see that others follow through, or not, on everything from hitting deadlines to arriving at a meeting prepared
and on time. "Not following through can really hurt team
trust and cause animosity," she says. By adhering to the ABCD
Trust Model, employees are able to understand the impact of
their behaviors on building or eroding trust and can identify
those aspects that need attention to build and maintain trusting
relationships.
Wade Trim focuses on team building through its Young Professionals Group, a networking program that offers networking and
career-development opportunities.
Now in its third year, the program features monthly webinars
during which employees exchange ideas and best practices, as
well as off-site activities such as playing Pictionary over lunch or
impromptu Skype sessions.
"These are great ways to strengthen relationships," Forney says.
TEAM BUILDING EVENTS

Even in the most successful engineering firms, the team concept
and its motivators-communication, collaboration, trust and
respect-need to be reinforced. While that is the domain of
management, often with assistance from the human resources
MAY / JUNE 2019

ENGINEERING INC.

Engineering Inc. - May/June 2019

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