I've seen lack of trust ruin many teams and organisations. These are 2, rarely mentioned, things that stop your team from taking ownership.

This is my 24 day of writing everyday. I hope getting an email that often is not messing too much with your inbox. After 30 days I’m going to change the cadence with which I write essays. That said, this experiment has been nothing short of ‘astonishing’ on so many levels it’s hard to name just one. I plan to share some thoughts on day 30. Now back to the regular programming.

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I've seen them happen too often 👉🏼 this is how you can change their course.

🤝 What is trust?

"Trust is firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something."
- Oxford dictionary

Trust is something that is built over time yet it's good to start with it a priori and see how things go.

💥I've seen two effects (titles I conjured myself):

#1 The doorstep effect🚪

You are hiring people for their talent and experience yet magically they become incompetent when they cross your company's doorstep.

You used a lot of time and money to recruit the right people, yet you don't trust their abilities.

The more teams are talked down, the less ownership they will take and, more importantly, they might stop trusting themselves to do a good job.

This then leads down the spiral of defeatism, lack of motivation etc., creating a vicious circle.

🤔 How to change that?👇🏼

• Make your expectations clear to the team in terms of delivery.

• If you don't see the team performing as expected - share the feedback directly, focus on the facts and ask what they are struggling with.

• Be an enabler, not a policeman-help them remove impediments and create a better environment to deliver quality work.

• Start giving more trust and responsibility to the team and mention what is happening and what you expect; verify the effects to ensure all is clear.

• Create a scaffolding around some of the decision-making - create the right frame for the decisions to be contained and look for coherence. 👀 👉🏼 44:27  (worth watching in its entirety):

#2 The victim effect 😞

You are not being listened/ignored as a team yet not taking ownership for your work.

Trust goes both ways. You cannot want any stakeholder to go with your requests if you haven't done the work yourself.

🤔 How to change that?👇🏼

• Know a way for things to work better and need help? Learn how to make a case as a team - gather data, ideas, and show others that you have the same end goals. Being where the work is done gives you a great advantage.

• Take care of your team's PR, and show your work and the impact made.

• Use metrics for decision-making and learn how to build arguments based on them.

• Most importantly, start delivering the right thing at the right time or at least show how you are progressing there.

• Don't be afraid to ask for help or say "no" if something cannot be done instead of over-promising. Check if you didn't fall into the Morgage-Driven-Development trap (does not only concern Scrum Masters):