How Project Managers Can Build Trust and Improve Project Performance

 

By Yoram Solomon
Founder
Innovation Culture Institute LLC

In a survey of 60 project managers, I found that the strongest agreement (4.5 out of 5) was with the statement “Building trust in the project team is part of the project manager’s role.” The second strongest was the statement “The level of trust in the project team has influence on the project performance.” In last place was the statement “I have the right tools to build trust in the project team.” Research supports the top statements. A 2015 study of 102 projects in different industries found that in high-risk projects, trust had a 45% positive impact on project performance, four times more than authoritarian control. Yet, while risk is well addressed in project management publications, trust is not. The word “risk” appears 2,079 times in PMBOK (6th Ed.), which has a whole 64-page chapter dedicated to “Project Risk Management,” while the word “trust” appears only 45 times. The word “risk” appears 103 times and in the title of 17 terms in the PMI Lexicon of Project Management Terms, while the word “trust” appears there - wait for it - not a single time. It is time to talk about how project managers can build trust, which is also the topic of my upcoming PMI Virtual Experience Series session.

Historically, the field of project management focused on control and coordination of project resources. Only recently, “soft skills” were starting to get more attention and for a good reason. My survey found that 75% of project managers stated that the project team didn’t report to them organizationally, 59% were not in the same group as the project manager, and 21% were not even in the same company. Furthermore, 84% of project managers indicated that the project team doesn’t work in the same building as them, 77% are not in the same city, and 45% are not even in the same country! Under such conditions, it is clear why the existence of trust would be critical to the success of the project, and why you, the project manager, are in such an important position to influence it.

So, what is trust, really?

In this article (and in my upcoming session) I will describe what trust is through the eight laws of trust, explain what makes a person trusted through my six-component trust model, show you a seven-step process to build trust, and give you a tool that will help you build trust in your project team such that you will gain those 45% project improvements.

Over the past 13 years I have observed eight laws of trust:
1.    Trust is continuous. It is not binary. There are different levels of trust required in different situations. 
2.    Trust is contextual. You don’t have to trust (or be trusted) in all areas of life. You (and other members of the project team) should trust (and be trusted) in the specific context of your role on the team. 
3.    Trust is relative. You will not be trusted the same way by different people. In fact, you can be trusted a lot by one person, and not trusted at all by another. 
4.    Trust is asymmetrical. Trust is a two-way street, but one person will not necessarily trust the other the same way the other will trust the first. 
5.    Trust is transferrable. If I trust you, and you trust another person, I may trust the other person based on the trust I have in you and you have in them. 
6.    Trust is reciprocal. It’s not only that if you’re trustworthy you will earn my trust. If I trust you, and I show you that I trust you, you will behave in a trustworthy way.
7.    Trust is dynamic. It changes all the time. Less between interactions and more during interactions. 
8.    Trust is two-sided. The trust that people have in you is a product of their own trustability (willingness to trust other people) and your trustworthiness. There is almost nothing you can do about the former, and everything you can do about the latter. 

The latter part of the last law is why I feel strongly that the building block of trust is individual trustworthiness, which is what my six-component trust model focuses on. So, what makes a person trusted (or not so)? 

The first set of components is made of who you are:
1.    Competence. This is the professional, technical, mostly objective component. You are ranked on a scale from being completely incompetent to being the best there is in your role. In my research, I found a 58.4% correlation between competence and trustworthiness. 
2.    Personality compatibility. This is the emotional, subjective, and sometimes even irrational component. This indicates how compatible your and the other person’s personalities are. You don’t have to have the same personalities, but they must be compatible. The range here is from the universal/absolute values, with universal good and bad (e.g., telling the truth vs. lying), to the merely different (risk-takes vs. risk-averse, introverts vs. extroverts, etc.) in which none is bad, but they still must be compatible to build trust. I found an 86% correlation between personality compatibility and trustworthiness. 
3.    Symmetry. This is the situational component that is driven by perspective. Are you and the other person on the same side or on opposite sides? Is there a common galvanizing mission or challenge, a common enemy, or do you compete for promotions? Are your contributions (and what you get) symmetrical or asymmetrical? Are you treating each other (and being treated) fairly or unfairly? I found a 32% correlation between symmetry and trustworthiness.

The second set of components is made of what you do (specifically, during an interaction with the other person):
1.    Positivity. What is your contribution to the interaction? This ranges from total BS and completely self-centered attitude on one end of the scale to being a “straight shooter” and putting others ahead of yourself on the other end. You should also know that research showed that we respond much stronger (negatively) to negative interactions than we do (positively) to positive interactions. 
2.    Time. The more frequently and the longer you interact with the other person, the more your positivity (for better or worse) affects the trust between you. 
3.    Intimacy. How do you interact with the other person? Is it mainly through words (e.g., email and text messages) or in-person? Research showed that we trust people whose nonverbal communications are consistent with their verbal ones, and we distrust people whose nonverbal and verbal communications are inconsistent. The more intimate your interactions are with the other person, the more your positivity (for better or worse) affects the trust between you.

For this second set of components, I have not yet researched the correlation with trustworthiness.

How does someone build their trustworthiness? I developed a proprietary seven-step process for that:

1.    Identify the relationship in which you want to be trusted. Trust is relative, and every relationship must be treated differently. 
2.    Find out what you are doing wrong that is holding you back from being more trusted. Remember that bad is much stronger than good. 
3.    Identify a new habit that will eliminate that one bad thing you are currently doing. 
4.    Set a Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-based goal. 
5.    Measure and log what you are doing. 
6.    Appoint an accountability partner. This will reduce the probability that you will not achieve your goal by 90%. 
7.    Turn this into a habit. This will take time, persistence and, most of all, having your accountability partner stay involved. 

Well, that’s how you become more trusted, but how can you, the project manager, build trust in your project team? For that purpose, I am developing a tool I call TrusTracker360™, based on Google Sheets. I will describe the tool in my upcoming session, and the process is as follows:

•    First, you must identify dependency relationships. Not everyone in the project team depends on everyone else on that team.
•    Find and rank those dependencies from “none” to “critical.” Then, get the trustors (those who must trust) to rank the trustees (those who must be trusted because there is a strong dependency on them). Those rankings are anonymous but will give every trustee a score along the six components of the trust model, as well as an overall trust score, based on a 47-item questionnaire. 
•    Finally, a matrix will correlate dependencies with trustworthiness levels and help you identify critical trust issues where you should intervene and help build trust, or make tough decisions and break up relationships that cannot be fixed. But only if you want to improve project performance by 45%.

Interested in learning more and furthering the dialogue? Join me in Session #406: Tools to Identify and Fix Trust Breakdowns in Project Teams at the PMI’s 6-7 October Virtual Experience Series Event on Wednesday, 6 October.