Help Create a Climate of Trust.

An excerpt from Teamwork: The Team Member Handbook

The “growing season” for trust is when people are being tested—in matters big or small. Only then do you get a chance to really prove anything. Will you keep your word? Do you honor your commitments? Are you consistent? Do you play fair? Can others count on you to “be there”— hanging tough under fire, helping out when they need you, putting yourself at risk for the sake of the team?

Real teamwork requires people to have faith in one another. And the only way you can build that kind of belief is by the way you behave.

Can you imagine working closely with a group of people you can’t trust? Would you want to be on the team if you couldn’t count on your teammates?

Teamwork always carries an element of risk, even in the best of circumstances. In a climate of mistrust, the risk factor climbs so high it becomes a barrier to cooperative effort. Individuals start looking out for themselves, at the team’s expense, since they doubt that they will be protected adequately by the group.

Everyone on the team should protect and nurture the trust level. It’s every bit as fragile as it is important. Even little violations can fracture people’s faith in each other. And if building trust is a slow and difficult process, rebuilding it can be next to impossible.

So don’t get careless with the small stuff—use every little chance you get to create a climate of trust. And remember that the harder the situation makes it for you to act in a trustworthy manner, the greater your opportunity to build the trust level in the team.

“You’ve got to have somebody first of all who can take criticism. We’re hard on ourselves. So a good team member has to be able to accept criticism from other people in order to make the whole team function better . . . criticism about his performance. Sometimes that’s hard. Ego can get in the way. We practice twice a day, six days a week, and you want somebody who can make a mistake and then come back after practice and confess up to the mistake right away and say, ‘I’ll fix it.’ That’s the bottom line. ‘I’ll fix it.’” 

Trusting other team members is a matter of life and death when six aircraft are flying wingtip-to-wingtip, 36 inches apart, and performing aerobatics at speeds of up to 500 miles per hour. U.S. Navy Cmdr. Gregg Wooldridge, of Springfield, Illinois, has commanded the Navy’s famed Blue Angels flight team for two years. A 21-year Navy veteran, Commander Wooldridge led an F/A-18 fighter squadron aboard the USS Midway before assuming command of the Blue Angels at Pensacola, Florida, in 1990.