Building trust
Team/trust building exercises seem to be the butt of jokes, but when done right, it's some of the best and highest leveraged time you can spend.
“When the trust account is high, communication is easy, instant, and effective.”
― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
Earlier this year, once it was safe to do so, some of our teams got together in Portugal. It was an amazing opportunity to get teammates who had been hired during the pandemic and/or worked remotely to each other (across cities and countries) to get together.
I had a single goal for the entire trip, not a new product, not adoption of new tech, not even anything directly business related, it was trust. If all we did for that week, was got to know each other better and increase our trust in each other and the teams - that would be a huge win. Trust helps you assume positive intent, which is really important when working as a team.
Because:
"that in order to understand what someone is telling you, it is necessary for you to assume the person is being truthful, then imagine what could be true about it."
― George A. Miller (1920–2012), Professor of Psychology at Princeton University.
(Miller is also the 7 +/- 2 things on working memory guy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller's_law)
