The Solace of Open Spaces, or Building Relationships of Trust
The title of this blog post is not mine, but instead, one belonging to Gretel Ehrlich. Her book of the same name,The Solace of Open Spaces, is part of the Western canon. She writes lyrically, poetically, about Wyoming and spaces way out west. Greenland, too, if that is of interest to you. But in going back and rereading Ehrlich’s essays, I came across this paragraph:
To live and work in this kind of open country, with its hundred-mile views, is to lose the distinction between background and foreground. When I asked an older ranch hand to describe Wyoming's openness, he said, "It's all a bunch of nothing – wind and rattlesnakes – and so much of it you can't tell where you're going or where you've been and it don't make much difference."
All of this space, this openness, started me thinking about trust and its role within teams, between people.
What does trust feel like? How can we create conditions to help trust flourish?
I Know It When I See It
This one is hard, so very hard.
Many years ago, in working on a team with several other individuals, I was asked this question by one of them: “Do you trust me?” I thought for a long moment, looked up, and shook my head “No.”
The team erupted. One individual was angry that I had answered honestly, another wanted nothing to do with the situation, and others agreed that although painful, the honest answer was best. Regardless of what was thought, we were in a tough spot: one team, no trust, and work that we needed to do together.
There is an old United States Supreme Court story as the justices debated the thresholds for what constituted obscenity and pornography. Justice Stewart, in a remarkably pithy moment, said that while he couldn’t describe it (it being pornography), “I know it when I see it.”
Back to the one team, no trust story, my point is this: if someone is asking if there is trust, if they are trusted, then they probably don’t feel that they are. If we borrow from Justice Stewart here, a feeling of trust could be phrased as “I know it when I feel it.”
I don’t have a pithy, uplifting answer for how that team came together, worked out our differences, and became an unstoppable, collaborative force. That team ended because it was disbanded a couple of months later. I do know, however, that my honest response to that brave, direct question was the only path that I could have taken. If I had given the safe, false answer of “Of course I trust you,” then I was only perpetuating a bad situation. In fact, I’d have made it worse because that person would have rightly known that I wasn’t being honest. Being right didn’t make it easy.
Creating the Conditions
Trust and psychological safety are identical twins in the family tree of team dynamics. Here are some practices to try to encourage the two to grow.
Alliances
In designing an alliance with an individual, team, or organization, I do three things:
Confidentiality—I might refer to this as Vegas rules/what happens here, stays here, but I have always found that people appreciate me calling out confidentiality as a specific frame for our coaching work. We all need a safe space to open up, and trust often begins with knowing that I will hold confidentiality. I start with confidentiality as I feel it is of the highest importance for a client to know about the conversation.
Permission—Next, I’ll talk about some of the coaching tools that I might use in service of my work with that person or organization. I might use metaphor, challenges, intrude, ask powerful questions. I’ll often phrase this as, “Do I have your permission to use these coaching tools as part of our work?” The client can say yes or no, but they get to buy into the relationship. They can tell me what they need or what they do not want. Getting permission shows respect.
What do you need from me in service of this relationship?—This is the final question of the alliance, and it is a favorite because it invites the person to co-create, to collaborate in making this space their own. It sets the tone out of the gate that this is a space of their choosing, of their designing, and it brings them into the conversation. It also shows respect: they have a say in what happens, and they need to step into the space to make it their own.
Alliances are individual and deeply personal, meaning that each coach creates their own, finding language that works for them. But they are a good starting place to building trust. They model transparency, respect, and that the coach has their back.
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Playing Nicely in the Sandbox
When you were young, odds are that you played in a sandbox at one point or another. And while in the sandbox, you probably had some rules that went a bit like this:
Don’t throw sand.
Take turns.
Share.
Don’t bite.
Sandbox rules apply to larger conversations, too. Those of us that facilitate a lot of team or group sessions know the importance of setting out the ground rules. I used to do this by asking the team what they wanted for their space, asking them to set the rules. Depending on the size of the group and how much time they had been working together, getting these points ironed out could take 15 minutes or more, time that could be spent more wisely.
Now, however, I use these six points as the baseline as they arose consistently in facilitated sessions. (You can read more about them in Diane Hamilton’s excellent book, Compassionate Conversations: How to Speak and Listen from the Heart.)
By and large, these points cover what most groups want as basic behavioral guidelines. We can do deeper dives on individual points, explaining the nuances of being for one another or what a respectful challenge might sound like, but this bootstraps the process.
Then, I ask, “Can we agree to these points as our sandbox rules?” We then fine-tune the baseline, adding clarification where needed. I conclude with these questions: “What is missing from this list? What do we need to add?”
Having sandbox rules does guarantee that a team will trust one another or that all participants will feel psychologically safe, but it does make it more likely for those to happen. Sandbox rules are akin to gardening. If we want ripe tomatoes and beautiful flowers, then we need to have good, well-fertilized soil, deep irrigation, and plenty of sunshine. Like those elements of gardening, sandbox rules help trust to flourish.
Intention Guides Attention
My opening question for coaching work used to be, “What is your topic today?" I’ve recently modified it to, “What is your intention for our work today?” (And for a deeper dive on how I frame coaching conversations, read “Five Powerful Questions for Every Coaching Conversation.”) Openings are incredibly important, setting the tone for the work, but so are closings. What if these were the questions with which we challenged one another, our leadership, our organizations? How could these questions bring trust into the open?
How do we want to model trust for one another? Within our organization?
I like to use questions to challenge people and organizations, but questions can also be used as intentions to guide attention. When we use questions as intentions, we all look more closely, more deeply, finding solace in those open spaces.
One of my 2021 goals is to be a speaker on a TedX stage. (We’ll see if I can make this dream a reality in our Covid-affected world, but I’m putting it out there as where I’m trying to go.) But as I want to speak on a bigger stage, that means a lot more practice speaking engagement, more Meetups, more everything. I’ll be speaking about clean language, metaphor, and how to use both in asking better, cleaner questions at Agile Regina as part of the Agile20Reflect Festival and then again at Lean Agile Toronto. Please join us!
The image used for this blog post was captured by Linda Nickell. Connect with her on Instagram as @coznlinda, or join in on Wednesday evenings for the Happiness Hour. Details, upcoming presentations, and past recordings can be found on her site.