Trust is a fundamental aspect of our social life, with relevance to each area. While driving, we trust that others will follow the road rules. When starting a relationship, we believe that our partner will support us. Leaving our child at kindergarten, we believe that he or she will not come to any harm. And how about trust in our workplace?
According to the Ernst & Young report “Global generations 3.0. A global study on trust in the workplace” published in 2016, less than half of full-time workers trust their employer, manager and colleagues. The study, which was conducted on an international scale, can easily be adapted to Polish conditions. Let’s quote another study, the CBOS survey conducted in Poland in March 2018: ”About 1/5 of respondents (22%) believe that the majority of people can be trusted. ¾ (76%) believe that we should be rather cautious and suspicious when it comes to relations with others”. When it comes to trust in business, the situation looks better though. 34% of CBOS respondents claim that trusting others in business is profitable, however 37% believe that it can bring negative results. 29% of respondents couldn’t decide.
The abovementioned results are not optimistic, as according to them almost half of all workers do not trust the people they work with. What are the consequences of such an approach? Decreased engagement, productivity, creativity, as well as unwillingness to put initiatives into practice. Lack of trust affects our perception of the workplace and the people we work with, which results in a constant feeling of insecurity.
In the article I would like to focus on trust in the workplace, based on the example of Scrum teams which I have been and am a member of.
Scrum as a framework emphasizes work and self-organization. What does it mean? We leave behind the models in which finding solutions requires long-term planning, creating dozens of documents and managerial supervision. In a Scrum team we plan our work, dividing the workflow into shorter, for example bi-weekly, iterations called Sprints. It allows for control and flexibility, and we are able to identify potential risks and react accordingly. Instead of creating documentation, we develop functional software.
In such a self-organizing team, responsibility plays a key role. In a Scrum Guide we can read the following: “Cross-functional teams have all the competencies needed to accomplish the work without depending on others who are not part of the team”. In other words, there is a collective responsibility in Scrum, since particular workers are not responsible for accomplishing particular tasks. Sceptics may say, though: “Collective responsibility results in an approach wherein no one takes responsibility for carrying out tasks”. If you experience such an approach in any team, whether Scrum or not, this might mean that there are some abnormalities in the way it functions.
From my own experience as a Scrum Master I can say that making an entire team responsible for carrying out work may have a positive influence in terms of motivation. Most importantly, thanks to such an approach we receive a product of maximized value. A developer who is an expert in his particular field knows all the pros and cons, the potential possibilities and risks in terms of technical implementation. Also, daily communication with a client and openness in the context of problems and chances should result in the delivery of a fully functional part of an application to a Product Owner.
Benefits:
In my daily work as a Scrum Master I have observed various situations and what I have noticed was the fact that personal failure within a team is much more severe than a failure witnessed by a line manager or a client. In Scrum we are all team members and together we strive to deliver the best possible value. The consequences of lack of trust, which I mentioned at the beginning of the article – lack of engagement, creativity and initiative – can be destructive for a team working in a Scrum framework, where in fact these values are a basis of its functioning. Let’s get back to the importance of responsibility: it makes us act reliably as we try not to let the team who puts its trust in us down. We strive to accomplish our work in the best possible manner. When it comes to leaders, it is their role to build an atmosphere of mutual trust. Observing such role models, it is easier to form teams based on trust, engagement and mutual assistance.
Scrum Master at JCommerce, currently working on a project for a German client who supports institutions and organizations in the area of digital transformation. He believes in empiricism and iteration and teaches Scrum Teams independence and responsibility. Outside of work, he’s a mountaineer and climber, as well as the operator of the Tuudi.net portal.
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