Getting to Unstuck

E23 | Trusted Teams Always Do These Things #TeamworkTuesday

• Season 1 • Episode 23

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Teams that have a high degree of trust also have many other common traits of success. Today on #TeamWorkTuesday, we're uncovering the secrets that make a team more than just a group of people working together.
The truth is, trust is complicated. But the good news is, there are questions we can ask of ourselves and each other to help build it or restore it. 

Getting to Unstuck is a live recorded podcast hosted by Christal Duncan, Colin Kingsmill and Carol Vickers from Whole Human Coaching. Find out more about our work and the leaders we help at https://wholehumancoaching.com

We would love to hear from you!

Trusted Teams Always Do These
Things
Colin Kingsmill: [00:00:00] Good
Carol Vickers: morning.
Colin Kingsmill: Hello. Good morning. How are you all?
Christal Duncan: I am fantastic. Happy happy day after the long
weekend. If you were in many parts of Canada in particular, it might
have been called family day. If you're in Manitoba, it's happy the end of
Louis Riel day, which was celebrated yesterday. We are so excited to
have this conversation.
I'm so excited. I can't speak on behalf of the collective, but I can, I feel so
strongly that we're on the same page with this. And we're going to get
into that in one second, but friends, if you are here for the first time and
you have not heard us talk about this yet, I want to [00:01:00] let you
know that on February 29th, we have something coming up that we think
that you may really be interested in for our first for the first time we're
offering a live coaching workshop.
It's called the future is whole human coaching, and we're going to be,
giving, helping you understand what are some of the tools that you can
have coaching that you can use as a leader. And the best part as far as
i'm concerned is we're also going to be doing some live coaching in
there So it's going to be a 90 minute live workshop If you want to find out
more about it if you want to sign up and get on the list Spots are limited
because it is a live workshop so you want to head over to whole human
coaching dot com?
And on the front page there, you're gonna be able to find it. And also up
in the top right corner, we're talking about it. So we look forward to
hopefully seeing you there. Okay, now let's get onto today's Teamwork
Tuesday topic. Today we're gonna be talking about things that trusted
teams. Always do. And when we say trusted [00:02:00] teams, we're
talking about trust being a foundational element to that team.

What is, what are the things that they always do, whether they're doing it
consciously or, or non consciously. There are, there are parts, there are
elements that they're doing. Teams that have a high degree of trust, also
they have many common traits of success. And so we're going to be
looking at that as well.
So to get us started, let's talk first about let's talk about the pain of, and it
is a pain, like not just a pain, but it is deep pain of people that sometimes
show up for days, months, possibly years in environments where trust
has been broken or betrayed, or they don't feel safe in that place. So can
we talk about what that looks like and in some of the instances where we
would see that happen?
Colin Kingsmill: Yeah. Let me, let me dive in. I've done a little bit of I
did a little bit of homework today for once. I shouldn't, I shouldn't say for
once, but, but what's interesting when you talk about when we talk about
trust, I [00:03:00] think it's important that we remember that it comes in
at various different angles.
So there, the trust can be amplified or breached between. An employee
and a leader. So the employee feels like the trust has been breached
between that person and the leader. Then there's then there's this idea
of bidirectional trust, which is people in a team or employees in an
organization have lost trust amongst themselves.
And then the last one is really, the leader or the leadership that has lost
trust towards the employee. And each of those has different elements to
it. So the, the one where myself as an employee I, the trust is breached
between me and the leader. You have things like feelings of betrayal
anger disappointment, anxiety.
And those can all lead to a really toxic environment. But one of the one
of the, one of the other elements that I was reading about was this,
[00:04:00] this, it hinders the ability to to create healthy relationships and
also for professional development. So it's, it's, it's bigger than just, Oh, I
don't trust you now in, in, in terms of, in terms of employee to employee,
I shouldn't be telling you.
Christal Duncan: It's terrible. Yeah. No, no. I have a question because
it's interesting what you said about it hinders professional development.
What, how, how would it hinder professional development

Colin Kingsmill: do you think well, well, you begin to lose motivation.
You begin to lose commitment to the organization's goals. Yeah. Kind of
lose sight.
You detach from the vision and the mission that, that, that is there. So
Carol Vickers: you begin looking for the accent.
Colin Kingsmill: Yeah, looking for the exit. So, so, so so we're speaking
about the people of the organization, right? And from those three angles,
but when you start to think about the impact on the organization, you
have issues [00:05:00] around retention.
You have issues around high turnover rates. You have something, you
have the possibility of loss of, of intellectual property, right? You have
lack, that, that sort of, Lack of trust creates a lack of transparency, which
can really cripple growth or cripple expansion. So it, so it has a huge
impact on the organization overall.
And it's, it's kind of mission, mission critical stuff. It is.
Carol Vickers: Yeah.
Colin Kingsmill: Sorry, go ahead.
Carol Vickers: No, I was just going to say, this really relates back. We
had put a survey in asking people about trust in their workplace. And 60
percent of people who responded said that yes, that trust had been
broken in the workplace and that had not been rebuilt.
And then there was 40%, fortunately, who said that they that it was not
an issue. But nobody responded that it had been broken and they had
managed to rebuild it. [00:06:00] So what you're speaking of, Colin, is a
very fundamental piece about the workplace and what's possible.
Because what that, how I read those, that statistic is that people choose
to leave rather than to figure out how to deal with
Colin Kingsmill: this.
They leave, or if they stay, sort of productivity and quality go down. So,
you know so, so morale gets eroded and then you stop adhering to the
values and then quality goes down. And I think you, you know, we don't

have, I didn't think of any examples to bring, but there are organizations
out there that we know that we've worked with and not that you've,
you've seen that.
Slow erosion of quality and in some big brands, even yeah. And the, the,
the other interesting thing that I was reading and looking at, as we were
sort of planning this discussion, what, what I forgot about, I forgot about
the leader to employee trust breach and how that actually can impact
leaders [00:07:00] judgment.
And their confidence and that can sort of push them into, well among
other things, but also sort of Stockholm syndrome. And we've, we've
seen a lot of that in the last year where leaders we've worked with don't
feel, don't feel they're in the right place or they're, they're imposters.
Carol Vickers: So they have the sense that they don't have the trust of
the people who they're, who are working for them.
And so that erodes their ability to lead because they don't feel like they
have the confidence to do so.
Colin Kingsmill: Exactly. Really. And then they start questioning
themselves, right? And, and. Oh,
Carol Vickers: yeah, that
Christal Duncan: totally makes sense when you think about it, right?
Because. Questioning
Colin Kingsmill: their judgment. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Christal Duncan: which then further perpetuates the lack of, of any
confidence or trust that people have in them.
So it just becomes this like, to complete self fulfilling prophecy over and
over again, like such a vicious circle. Yeah. Oh, did Carol just leave?
[00:08:00] She'll be back hopefully. Okay.
Colin Kingsmill: So, but, but it's interesting. Hey, we, we, we kind of,
we kind of took this topic from where we started last week. And the more
you dive into it, the more it becomes, I think, apparent that, that this is

such a critical, essential ingredient for leaders and teams and
businesses that Often I think it's kind of overlooked.
There's, I don't know about you, but I just, I don't remember any situation
I've been in where it's like, Oh, well maybe the word trust is kind of got to
be first and foremost and fundamental.
Christal Duncan: I've been in a situation and I've talked about in the
past. And now when I look back, retrospect is always hindsight's always
2020.
And I think about how that trust was lost. I didn't have the time at the
time, the tools or the understanding about it. So it was I had, I had made
it about me that I was that, that I was the problem. And you start to just
[00:09:00] have you start to make assumptions that things can't change,
right? If you don't see the potential of something changing in that
situation.
What about Colin, when you, so we talked about, we talked about leader
to employees employees and leaders. What about employee to
employer, like team, like people that are on, at the same place on a
team? What are some of the things around that, about how the, the lack
of trust shows itself?
Colin Kingsmill: Like with in, inside a team, like employee to employee.
Well, that, that really I, I was reading some of the research is, is about
loss of morale. And, and the beginning of the creation of a toxic culture.
So, so, you know, when When, when it's in that same sort of Petri dish
isn't a bad example, but when it's in that same group, that same circle
and, and the trust is so close to home, you know, if you, if you breach
trust or trust is breached with [00:10:00] somebody that maybe is your
leader and they have a team of 20 100, you might not feel what's the
word?
You might not feel that the impact of it as much, but when you're close in
a team, you, you, you lose morale, you lose motivation, you lose
engagement, right? That that has a huge impact on the organizational
culture that you're, that you're working within. So and and once you've
lost that, then again, this adherence to the values and mission of the
company are so important.

And it kind of goes back to what we talked about a little while ago about
our micro mission. And maybe we need to define that better. But, you
know, in within a small team. They've got to have a singular purpose,
singular mission, something that they, they can all grab, grab onto, but
we can go back to that another
Christal Duncan: time.
Yeah, so what's also interesting there is about, and in particular, in the
employee to employee situation, I [00:11:00] mean, in any, in any
situation, there's often. No, there's always like, I think that either maybe
people come, we all have narratives that we come to a situation. So we
may have a specific bent towards certain type of people that we don't
trust or like, you know, specific things that, that we're using in defense
mode.
But what I find interesting when we think about it is that there's often in
the workplace amongst a team, there is an inciting incident and it doesn't
have to be. A really big thing. It can be something really small.
Colin Kingsmill: Oh, yeah.
Christal Duncan: Like multiple like death by a thousand paper cuts kind
of thing where it's like there that the trust can be eroded over and over
again.
And I think about some of the when, you know, I don't know if you've
ever ever had this in in a work, you know, worked on on a team where
there's something that someone did that, When you look back, you're
like, actually, that was [00:12:00] probably where the train track started
to like take us somewhere and how I, and how I related to them.
And I think there's some common, there's some common traits there as
well about, about what, what happens. So for example, if someone takes
the credit for something, right. Which doesn't, which seems like it's I
mean, that's a trust thing because can I trust you to, can I trust you to
share my ideas?
If you're going to take the credit for it down the road, if someone does,
you know, all the ways that come comes back to ways we may not feel
safe in a space and all the things that can, that can activate things inside
of us that will cause us to slip into reacting in a certain way.

Colin Kingsmill: No, I agree. I, I, I can totally pinpoint those moments in
time.
And it's interesting. It's almost a human. It's, it's almost a, I can't find the
right word, but, but you intuitively, your gut knows it. It's like that blink
moment, right? Your [00:13:00] gut just knows it. You're like, Oh, you
just breached trust, even though, you know, there, it might seem
ethereal and, and, and, and and not specific, but your body knows right
away and and, and tells you, tells you in many ways.
So we, we had spoken. About about What what are the sort how do you
so so trust is broken, right? And we we see its impact we had started to
talk about some of the some of the questions that you can start asking
like how do you bring a safe constructive positive coaching conversation
into Something that might be broken.
Yeah, and and Yeah, should we explore some of those questions or ask
them of each other? Yeah, sure. You know,
Christal Duncan: and hopefully Kara will be able to join us again. We're
both kind of trying to keep an eye on it. It looks like she lost her internet.
So hopefully she'll make it back. Yeah. So yeah, so.
Let's, let's build a scenario, let's oh, we got a,
Colin Kingsmill: Question from [00:14:00] Peter DeBruin. Literacy can
not only be personal, but just what necessary colleagues grades can
affect you, too. Oh, yeah,
Christal Duncan: absolutely. Oh, yes, that is actually a great point.
Yeah.
Colin Kingsmill: Good point, yeah.
Christal Duncan: Absolutely. When we pick up some when we're, yeah,
Colin Kingsmill: hopefully if we're empathetic enough, yeah, you know,
yeah,
Christal Duncan: for sure.

And we recognize, I think it's our, like our our justice meter. If someone's
been being treated unjustly, if it, if it, So, you know if we see that
happening, yeah, I, I can totally see that. So here's, okay. So let's think
about a scenario in, in, of how this would play out in the, on a team. So
how trust could be.
Let's say, for example, you and I, we're, let's say one of us is coaching
coaching someone who says, I, I feel like I have broken the trust of, of
the people I lead or the people, my team in some way I know
that[00:15:00] there's, or, or I sit. Even maybe not that far forward. Let's
dig back a little bit. I feel like they don't trust me.
Maybe that's, let's, let's keep it in that space for a second. Right. So, so
Carol's not coming back. So we'll just, we'll, we'll go with, we'll just hang.
We'll stay the course here. Hang out. We haven't had a chance to have
a conversation like this for a while, Colin. So let's just say we're in that.
And You're coaching someone and they say, I feel like my team doesn't
trust me.
What are some of the questions that we would be asking that, that client,
that person that we're coaching?
Colin Kingsmill: Yeah. I mean, certainly one of the first ones that would
come to mind would be how do you, how do you think you can be
forgiven? for that breach. How do you think, yeah, how do you think,
how do you think you can be forgiven or, or forgive, right?
It may, it may be kind of reciprocal. [00:16:00] So how do you, how do
you, how do you forgive and, and and move forward, move on? You
know, and, and also it, I guess it depends on the volume of the breach,
but what are your expectations for moving forward? Yeah, what those
would be, those would be the two questions where I would probably
start.
Christal Duncan: Yeah. One of the questions that I would ask is if if that
was the starting point where they felt like they weren't, they weren't
trusted. I, I think one of the things that I would ask is when is the last
time that you felt like you couldn't trust someone else and what were
some of the common things there?
Because that will, that also helps us see that pull things out. That we
may be blind to that. We might not be cognizant of because it's always

easier to see it in someone else first and then to come back and then to
think about exactly like what you said about how can that be built. I think
another important element to [00:17:00] to think about is when we ask
when we look for feedback.
So
Colin Kingsmill: Oh, feedback . That's a whole
Christal Duncan: feedback is, yeah, feedback is a thing that people
think is so, like everybody wants, everybody wants feedback, but when
we think about feedback, there's a lot of questions around how we're
eliciting feedback. First of all, the first thing that I would be ques asking
about is the dynamic of.
The feedback situation, the feedback conversation. Is there a power
dynamic at play that is being basically put down on the table so that
that's a safe space? And how do you build that safe space? You know,
feedback, if you're looking for feedback, if you truly want to be trusted
based on the feedback that you're given from someone, I would.
I would then if I'm, if I was giving, let's say you were my boss and I was
giving you feedback, the thing that would build my trust is if I was able to
be honest about something. And I'd probably only be [00:18:00] slightly
honest. So don't make the assumption that I'm being a hundred percent
honest. Right. I probably want to be slightly honest because there's
going to be an element of me that's.
And I'm going to be like, is this going to come back and bite me in the
ass? Right. And if I'm being, and if I be being honest with you, then what
is, do you, how do you accept it? How do you receive that feedback?
Because if you want me to trust you, then receiving it really means
actually. Receiving it and not putting up all the defense modes about all
the reasons, all the excuses, all the ways that you're going to promise to
do better.
Just receive it and sit with it.
Colin Kingsmill: Gosh, I mean, I think we could have so many
episodes, we could have so many episodes just on this one episode
because, you know, feed feedback. Is is so important. We last year we

did a great workshop on performance reviews, right? How to come at a
performance review through coaching.
We, we we, we, so we looked at the different angles of it, not of attack,
but angles of perspective in terms of trust and how it's breached
[00:19:00] the The, the other question that I would probably ask is how
do you, what needs to happen for this breach not to happen again?
Yeah. Fantastic. What has to be built?
What processes, what how do you change the performance for you?
How do you change the feedback loop? What, what kind of oh, there's
Carol. What kind of, you know, what kind of actions? Do all parties need
to take to actively repair the relationship? What has to happen to make
sure that breach doesn't happen again?
And what are the possibilities if it doesn't right? Because I think also kind
of to end on a positive note when you do have trust, right? And I think
Carol's got some interesting comments from the book. She's she's
reading when you do have trust. You can, you can, great things can
happen, right? And the ripple effect, you know, the butterfly effect
actually works.
And so, so those would be the questions that [00:20:00] I would ask from
a coaching perspective. Thank you. Thank you for coming back, Carol.
Nice to see you. I was, I
Carol Vickers: lost trust in my internet.
Colin Kingsmill: I bet you did. It
Christal Duncan: happens. So Carol, we were just finishing up our
conversation talking about what questions we would we ask someone,
someone we were coaching, if they said to us, I feel like I'm not being
trusted by the people I lead.
So we walked through some of those questions. I'm curious as we, as
we head down the homestretch here. You have, you have some
thoughts that we didn't get, weren't able to get to earlier around, in
particular around radical candor and what that means for trust in the
workspace. Well,

Carol Vickers: just quickly, I was reading the book by Kim Scott called
Radical Candor and it has been.
Adopted in some ways, in a, in a very positive way, and of course there's
all the negative ways about it, because candor has its own flavor. I can
be honest with you, [00:21:00] which means I can be brutal with you,
which is not true. So this is about a gentle conversation, and I'm sure
you covered a bit about feedback in this regard, because really what we
want to be able to do, to be heart to heart with another human being, is
to be able to be honest with them.
Yeah. have the freedom to have those conversations, but we have to
have created that space of relationship in order to be able to be to have
that open dialogue that, that occurs. So in the workplace, it begins with
one on one conversations. It begins with those coaching kind of
conversations, and then it can go to bigger meetings where their people
are invited and included in the possibility of having a conversation where
I speak my mind.
Christal Duncan: Yeah. Yeah. But the important thing is, is that whole
we are whole humans and we need those one on one conversations.
That is how, that's how value and trust is built. That's how [00:22:00]
connection is built is through those one on one conversations. So yeah.
Yeah. We're going to be talking about that more next week on Thursday,
the 29th at 11 o'clock Eastern standard time.
And remember, if you want to join us, you need to sign up. And we just
want to stress the fact that space is limited and we would love to have
you join us. So you can head on over to whole human coaching and sign
up for it's called the future is whole human coaching as well. This
Thursday, it is backward.
We have a thriving Thursday and we have a guest. Colin, can you tell us
really quickly about Amanda, our upcoming
Colin Kingsmill: guest? Yeah, Amanda Ring is a fellow coach, but also
a healer and a shaman and an individual with an enormous amount of
experience. And this is a topic that is really near and dear to her. It's, it's
the, the, the, That Obviously this caffeine is pretty strong
Well,

Carol Vickers: I left you in the lurch Colin, sorry
Colin Kingsmill: We're gonna have a [00:23:00] conversation with
Amanda about healing in the workplace in the workspace today and so
when when these things do happen in the workplace where trust has
been breached and and And, and, and you, you, you are not feeling
whole.
We're going to, we're going to expand that conversation because one of
the things we also want to leave you with this is remember that if it is
breached and when it is breached, that we are all, we all are human and
you must take the time to heal. Yeah. So on Thursday, we're going to
dive into a little bit of that.
That some, some, some conversation and tools and, and, and tips on,
on how to heal and but give yourself time. We always rush things in life.
It's it's crazy. Yeah. So yeah,
Christal Duncan: it's funny. I'm looking forward to it and we hope that
you'll be able to join us. For those of you who are here live, thanks for
sticking around this long.
Don't forget that if you liked this episode or any of the other episodes
you [00:24:00] may have listened to, please consider subscribing and
sharing the episode as we want more people to understand the power of
being a whole human and showing up in life and work. So until next
time, it's thanks for joining us and have a great day.

People on this episode

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Carol Vickers

Co-host
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Christal Duncan

Co-host
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Colin Kingsmill

Co-host