Trustworthiness... Then Trust

Trust is an import part of what makes agile really work. It is so important, we are intentional about creating the opportunity for that trust to emerge within the team. We are intentional about creating a planning, delivery, and feedback cadence that helps trust form between the team and the business. Trust is a fundamental precondition to how we write requirements, how we estimate, and how we assess progress. Without trust, agile isn't really very agile.

But what do you do if you are in an organization where trust is really low? What if you are working in an organization with a long history of distrust between the development team and the business... an organization where the business has unrealistic expectations and a perception that development never gets anything done. You might decide to adopt agile, but that history isn't going to go away overnight. In this case, is it fair to ask the business to trust the team?

One of the biggest complaints I hear from new agile teams, is that the business does not trust them to deliver. They are convinced that all their problems would go away if the business would just trust them to do their jobs. These teams want the business to trust them first. The problem is that the business has no history of getting what they want. They have no history of software being delivered on time. They have no history of getting the quality they need to be successful with their customers.

If you were the business, would you trust you to deliver?

What teams don't realize is that they aren't safe to be trusted. The business is on the hook for delivering value to their customers. They are on the hook for revenue and market share. With no foundation of trust to build on, asking them to trust is like asking them to take their hands off the wheel of the car. They are responsible for getting from point A to point B and want some degree of assurance that they are going to get there. Trusting the team feels like an irresponsible loss of control.

If you are a team that wants to be trusted, I would suggest that you stop asking the business to trust you. When you frame the problem this way, it makes you powerless to do anything about it. Either the business changes or you can't be successful... the problem is beyond your ability to influence. What you need to do is become trustworthy. Becoming trustworthy is something that you have power to do something about. If you are trustworthy long enough, you will earn the trust of the business and won't have to ask for it.

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Trust Falling

For the past 10 years I've been involved with a Boy Scout high adventure program called Project COPE. The goals of COPE are to develop skills in communication, planning, teamwork, trust, leadership, decision making, problem solving, and self-esteem. The program is developed around a series of initiative games, more complicated low ropes elements, and ultimately a full blown high adventure course that puts you some 30 to 40 feet up in the trees.

This past weekend I took 17 teenagers and 4 adults out for a weekend of team building in the woods. You never know quite what to expect as every group is different. You can count on each weekend to be very powerful, and if you are open, you'll learn a lot about your team, and about yourself, in the process. If you are interested in learning more about the program, you can click here for some additional information.

This weekend did not disappoint. We started off with rain Friday night, but by mid-day on Saturday, the weather was beautiful. By lunch we had a group of strangers learning to work together, communicating, and beginning to coalesce into a team. We played skin the snake and marshmallow river. We learned to safely catch a falling team member, went on a blindfolded walk through the woods, and discovered how to walk on a high tension wire using pivot points.

By the end of the first day, the team was ready for the trust fall. The trust fall begins on a platform about 5 feet off the ground. The idea is that you fall backwards into the waiting arms of your team members, who safely catch you, and gently lower you to the ground. For many, this level of trust is very difficult and doing the event is a very powerful and emotional experience.

I was the facilitator of this event and as such, the first to fall. Aside from reminding them about proper falling technique, I want to demonstrate my trust in them, and show them I believe in their ability to catch me. It always helps getting the less enthusiastic participants over their fear when I go first… well… except Saturday. You see, the team said they were ready for my fall, but in reality, they didn't know quite what to expect.

They dropped me.

They broke my fall a little, but I basically went through their arms and hit the ground. I wasn't injured too badly, a little bruised maybe, but now I needed to quickly figure out what to do. In ten years of doing trust falls, never once had I been dropped. What now? I had a team that had just spent an entire day learning how to trust each other. Our whole event was at risk.

I got up, dusted myself off, and began to debrief what just happened. The team acknowledged they had not been ready. I acknowledged that I had not done a good job making sure they were clear what needed to happen and the potential 'impact' of failure. We talked about what needed to happen differently next time. Everyone was on board and ready to try again. We recommitted as a team.

I was a little sore and decided to let one of my instructors go next. I guess I wasn't ready to trust again so quickly. We ended up getting everyone to do the fall and the team felt good they had recovered. Once everyone was through, they asked me to fall again. I was a little reluctant because once trust is broken it is difficult to get it back. As their leader, I needed to repair the relationship and show them that I was willing to give them a second chance, so I fell.

They caught me.

I asked them at the final debrief why it was so important for me to fall a second time. They said that while it was important for them to trust each other, they wanted to earn back my trust. As their leader, I was part of the team. It was a good weekend.

Link to my post on Agile Chronicles:

http://blog.versionone.net/blog/2008/04/trust-falling.html

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