I’ve been working with a group of people from many different organisations who have been thrown into collaborating because of the pandemic.

They have achieved a lot, but when they took some time to reflect, they were able to see tensions which were exacerbated because they didn’t know each other very well and their ‘trust cushion’ was thin. So we experimented with some ground rules during a workshop session, all designed to help build trust.

These ground rules didn’t come out of nowhere. The assignment included me interviewing each person separately so I could hear directly about what was working well and less well, as well as building up my own picture of the group dynamic by ‘reading between the lines’.

Assume good intent.
Listen to understand, not to respond. Quieten the internal voice.
Respond to what’s in front of you, not to what you imagine.
No interruptions.
Share the air – take responsibility for helping everyone have time in the conversation, including by taking less time that you might usually to make your points.
No ‘chat’ in Zoom or WhatsApp during the session.

The ground rules led to a very different kind of online conversation for this group.

Gone were the backchat and ‘secret’ side conversations which encourage factionalism and made people suspicious of each other.

The slower pace of the conversation meant people listened to each other more accurately.

Some of the ground rules were very practical and observable (e.g. no ‘chat’, no interruptions). Others were suggestions and we would not be able to tell directly whether people followed them or not (e.g. quieten the internal voice).

And the act of naming some of the things which had gone wrong in previous meetings meant people were more aware of the unintended consequences of their behaviour. They also had a new vocabulary and an implied permission to speak more openly about what was going on for them, during the meeting.

Although these ground rules were proposed for the specific workshop sessions I facilitated, the group decided to adopt them for future meetings.

Which ground rules help you build trust in a group?

Making the Path by Walking

This post was first published in December 2020’s Making the Path by Walking newsletter. Scroll right down to subscribe.