Traci Scherck: Creating dream teams, what exactly does that mean, and how do we create dream teams inside of organizations, I haven’t hint for you.

Traci Scherck: it’s called trust so welcome to talent optimization podcast with Tracy shirk and I have a fantastic guest with me today I have Dr Tina house and Tina is with us from the positive edge.

Welcome Tina.

Tina Hallis: Thank you excited to be here Tracy.

Traci Scherck: yeah so when we build dream teams inside of our organization.

Traci Scherck: What are those key factors that really make that team, a dream.

Tina Hallis: You know, we I think whether they’re remote or in person, you know we need teams that can work together and cooperate and communicate openly and.

Tina Hallis: and get through decisions and get through problems and conflict.

Tina Hallis: And we need teams who can really innovate and collaborate together, but you can imagine, I mean you pick any one of those and just imagine yourself being in a team, where there is no trust or very little trust that that’s turned into a major obstacle.

Traci Scherck: yeah absolutely does, and not only is it an obstacle, but it becomes where employees become disengaged with working with those key individuals.

Tina Hallis: Oh isn’t that the truth, I think we can probably all think back to examples in our own careers around that.

Traci Scherck: yeah absolutely you know and.

Traci Scherck: You know what i’m so excited about of our conversation today is kind of that three step process that you have with teams and with trust in you know before we jump into that there’s you know when we think about those examples.

Traci Scherck: of where we have miss trust or misalignment and the team, you know i’m thinking through.

Traci Scherck: You know clients that i’ve worked with in the past where.

Traci Scherck: You know, a leader will say hey asked one person to do something ask another person to do the same thing that asked the third person to do the same thing now all the sudden individuals feel like oh my gosh i’m not valued or what’s going on.

Traci Scherck: When there’s that lack of communication that lack of trust and it’s like you know So how do we shift that into that dream team because that’s typically not it.

Tina Hallis: Yes, so true yeah so i’m excited to talk about that today because.

Tina Hallis: Especially you can imagine, with virtual teams that create some additional barriers to building that trust and even maintaining trust you may think Oh well, gosh back when we were in person, we were all good it it doesn’t translate over there, additional challenges once we are remote.

Traci Scherck: Absolutely, and when we’re working remote what is really important about individuals understanding themselves and their own personality styles and perspectives with how that impacts trust on a team.

Tina Hallis: Yes, it’s.

Tina Hallis: That to me is one of the first important steps is just to realize that you know, we think that we.

Tina Hallis: understand reality that we see the world as it is but one of the biggest things i’ve learned from my studies of positive psychology and working with clients is that.

Tina Hallis: No, we interpret the world around us, we all have our own unique perspectives and so just understanding and appreciating that fact is a huge first step.

Tina Hallis: And realizing that you know it can be the same project, it can be the same situation, but as TEAM members, we might all have different perspectives on what’s going to be easy what’s going to be hard what should be the priorities and that can create a lot of friction, as you can imagine.

Traci Scherck: Absolutely, and with that those perspective, some of it is just based on how we’re wired from our personality types and then it leads into that communication right So what are those key communication pieces.

Traci Scherck: So when we look at understanding and appreciating TEAM members, how do you do that.

Tina Hallis: yeah well.

Tina Hallis: Like we just said first just understanding that we’re all different, and then realizing a little bit of what shapes our perspective, why is it that this you know teammate over here.

Tina Hallis: is pushing so hard to get things done, or maybe this teammate over here is always disagreeing with our ideas.

Tina Hallis: And if we think about it, there it’s sort of I think of it like a web there’s all this overlay and interaction, but the nodes on this web include things like you said personality type.

Tina Hallis: but also our past experiences, you know what what we’ve been trained in even our childhood our strengths things like even what generation we’re from.

Tina Hallis: All of these what department, we work in that I remember seeing a lot in my corporate days, all of these things, create a filter on how we see and interpret these situations and problems and challenges.

Tina Hallis: yeah and so in order, and so, but to your question, how do we.

Tina Hallis: Then address that again understanding that and then I have some key ideas i’ll share a little bit later on how we really can adapt because.

Tina Hallis: yeah this this is it’s a major challenge to get through that.

Traci Scherck: And i’m curious, how do individuals adapt on a team, especially knowing hey we got xyz strategy that we have to implement to get a specific you know outcome or result.

Traci Scherck: In and you know, knowing that hey we’re all in agreement of this is the thing that we need to do, but we don’t agree on the how.

Traci Scherck: And some of us are big picture, and some of us are really detailed people right like I heard you say earlier hey some of us are just.

Traci Scherck: Are you mentally active and it could be, because they’re so concerned about those details that someone else’s firing at such a high level they don’t see those details So how do you bring all those things together.

Tina Hallis: yeah.

Tina Hallis: Another one of those Aha moments I had, as I was, you know back in my positive psychology they studying this and then in teaching it.

Tina Hallis: Is a little bit of how again understanding and being aware of some of the neuroscience and how our brains work, because when we.

Tina Hallis: Are around people who are different than us right who see the world differently, who we perceive as different maybe we feel like we don’t know them again the trust factor is missing.

Tina Hallis: It triggers a response in our brain a threat response that is similar as if someone were physically trying to harm us and so suddenly now we get defensive, or we shut down or you know there’s like.

Tina Hallis: front fight and flight response gets triggered with all that cortisol surging through our system definitely not a good situation for collaboration and the communication and so first just just recognizing that and recognizing some of the ways that that manifests.

Tina Hallis: You know, for some people, again, depending upon personality style depending upon their background.

Tina Hallis: It might be that they feel like their status is being threatened like oh you’re challenging me.

Tina Hallis: Dr David rack of the neuro leadership Institute, he has an acronym called scarf and that stands for status see a certainty like you’re challenging my certainty about.

Tina Hallis: My work and who, I am autonomy my feelings of control relatedness like Oh, you know I can’t relate to you I don’t understand you and then fairness this just feels unfair so that scarf model.

Tina Hallis: understanding that really can be key and thinking through our responses and how to address some of these ways different people react that’s that’s a first step, I would suggest.

Traci Scherck: I love that I haven’t heard that model before and so when you’re going through that model, what are some of those things that you can take with those that acronym and actually put it into practice.

Tina Hallis: Yes, so you can imagine um you know, think of like your predictive index assessments i’m my background is more in the disc.

Tina Hallis: personality assessments, but if you know if you know more about the personality and the styles of your teammates you’ll have a better sense of like oh.

Tina Hallis: You know, do is are they more sensitive around the area of their status and what does that mean to them isn’t more about their social status or professional status.

Tina Hallis: Are they someone who needs a lot of certainty, are they someone who needs a lot of detail, you know is relatedness really important Are they really.

Tina Hallis: need to connect deeply and socially to other people to to gain that trust and so kind of taking into account that scarf model, along with sort of the personality styles.

Tina Hallis: You know and and having the opportunity to learn about both right take the predictive index test take another type of personality assessments of strengths assessment.

Tina Hallis: And don’t just take them but discuss them and share them and keep them top of radar so people remember oh hey i’m in this team with Tom or Joe or Kim or Sally and.

Tina Hallis: I need to know a little bit about their strengths their personality and then think about that in related to this whole scarf type of model.

Traci Scherck: yeah absolutely and that kind of or you take something like a personality, assessment and put it into 3D of a hey how this actually works right so.

Traci Scherck: So many of the personality assessments tell me about me, but when we can put the team together and really understand what we’re trying to impact.

Traci Scherck: It makes it so that it actually hits those profitability and productivity measures inside of the organization and guess what it’s just much more fun to work on a dream team.

Tina Hallis: Oh gosh.

Tina Hallis: that’s so true yeah and so thinking of you know, so that part sort of addresses our differences, looking at that, but then the other piece of this is how do we find similarities right again.

Tina Hallis: You think about that sense of belonging or relatedness, how can we take time during our work hours to find those common grounds and whether it’s sharing life experiences finding common values or hobbies.

Tina Hallis: I always like to tell people you know start off the meeting with an icebreaker even though you all know each other and say hey what are.

Tina Hallis: two to three other jobs you’ve had what are some of your favorite places you visited what are your favorite hobbies you know just taking a few minutes during.

Tina Hallis: Maybe it’s every meeting to just let people share more about who they are, because then we can find things in common, and we feel that stronger connection.

Traci Scherck: yeah absolutely that teamwork and employee experience right, because if we have a team that’s very results focused and driven to get results, a lot of times they never take the time for that teamwork and employee experience.

Traci Scherck: And so often, we need balancers on a team to balance, you know.

Traci Scherck: hey we’ve got results driven but we’re dysfunctional because we’re all competing against each other, so when you have that balance or that can kind of bring the team, together, we can be a much more productive team I love that approach.

Tina Hallis: yeah and it’s fascinating to me as I study you know trust in teams, but especially remote or virtual teams, however, you want to talk about it.

Tina Hallis: i’ve learned that there’s actually two kinds of trust that’s critical in this and one is called the cognitive trust which is like hey I know you’re capable of doing your job, I know you have the skills right and there again.

Tina Hallis: We need to learn that about each other, I need to know hey you’re my go to person when I have a technical issue when I have a legal issue you know, whatever it might be.

Tina Hallis: And then the second type of trust is that emotional trust that I know you as a person that you know, I feel that connection and related this, and these are two separate things that need to be addressed you know both and are both critical to all those other factors of that dream team.

Traci Scherck: Absolutely, so I just want to repeat this because I think that this is a great point, so we have cognitive trusts and we have interpersonal trust is what I heard you say.

Tina Hallis: Right and, if you look in the psychological academic papers, interestingly, they call that that second trust.

Tina Hallis: aspect or an effective and that kind of has to do with sort of our emotions and attitude around stuff So if you run into it that way, that means the same thing kind of that emotional interpersonal type trust.

Traci Scherck: awesome That is fantastic so as we’re creating dream teams, what are some of those kind of key things that organizations can do.

Traci Scherck: To really bring the trust in in both areas but also ensure that you know what we have the right people on the right seat on the bus here to impact this specific outcome that we’re looking to do.

Tina Hallis: yeah and it’s funny right as you think about like we were just talking about with differences it’s like well, maybe we’d be just better off finding people who already are very similar so when they just get along better, but you can imagine that.

Tina Hallis: that’s not really what you want, on your dream team, you need people who have different perspectives and different experiences, you want to.

Tina Hallis: be able to see more possibilities and more solutions and yet having that diverse background right can create those challenges, so it is really about.

Tina Hallis: Having a diverse team and then helping them appreciate their differences, you know.

Tina Hallis: You know the famous study around the Aristotle project at Google did right helping them build that psychological safety.

Tina Hallis: And I have a quote here I just love this, this is by the head of industry at Google.

Tina Hallis: Paul santa’s gotta he says there is no team without trust people need to feel heard, they need to feel that they can say their ideas, without being judged.

Tina Hallis: They need to share what’s bothering them, they need to be able to take personal risk without being worried about being embarrassed and so again.

Tina Hallis: The the activities and intention of doing these assessments, like the predictive index or or the disc or the myers briggs doing strengths assessments.

Tina Hallis: Sharing the scarf model so people understand a little bit about how this all blends together and then taking intentional time for those activities to help people learn about each other find that common ground and I bet you probably have some things you could add to that list too.

Traci Scherck: yeah absolutely and you know, looking at all those together it’s really taking those key thing is and.

Traci Scherck: You know, we use predictive index to really look at this and say Okay, what type of a team, do you have based on the personality traits of the team and what type of team, do you need to execute that strategy.

Traci Scherck: And again it’s really looking at it, so that you’re very specific in a workplace environment around what is the job to be done and executed on and how do we ensure we’re supporting the people to really do that.

Traci Scherck: You know, and I think I would be remiss if I didn’t talk a little bit about diversity here we’ve talked a lot about diverse types of behavioral types.

Traci Scherck: But within this you know the diversity of the individuals on our team and the different backgrounds and the cultural backgrounds is so incredibly important.

Traci Scherck: For us to really execute those key strategies and serve our client base and when we talk about diversity there’s so much that’s come out of it, especially lately of the challenges in the beauty of diversity.

Traci Scherck: The key here is setting up our team, so that we can overcome.

Traci Scherck: You know the the struggles with diversity to create inclusive environments where individuals can really connect collaboratively together.

Traci Scherck: So that they have that psychological safety so i’m kind of going pulling some of those threads Tina that you talked about but I didn’t want to end our conversation today without talking about the incredible importance of diversity at all different levels.

Tina Hallis: Yes, thank you for bringing that up, because that is, that is a key part of like you say that the getting those different perspectives and we need that diversity.

Tina Hallis: But, especially in remote teams that then takes extra effort extra time and intention to to take benefit in those right and let those actually create a lot of advantage, rather than having them create friction and yeah I love how both of what we do is really all designed to help organizations.

Tina Hallis: benefit and take advantage of that.

Tina Hallis: Diversity and bringing that all together.

Traci Scherck: Absolutely so as we in all of our podcasts you know i’m super curious what’s one key actionable takeaways that our HR professionals listening can implement today.

Tina Hallis: You know it’s interesting in all the research and stuff i’ve been reading around remote teams and trust there was a Harvard Business Review That said, one of the main things that HR can do.

Tina Hallis: is to help build Community now that sounds kind of generic, but I think it really is about educating leaders in the organization on these types of assessments on these types of activities and the importance of trust.

Traci Scherck: awesome and what’s one key takeaway for executives listening.

Tina Hallis: I understand that there’s so many companies right now they’re feeling overwhelmed in so many ways.

Tina Hallis: and their people are getting burnt out, but if you do not address this, if you, you know leaders need to intentionally take the time to invest in these.

Tina Hallis: Ways of building that connection, if you do not do that.

Tina Hallis: it’s like having a fire in your House and you’re and you’re still trying to just you know go about living your day but you’re not addressing the fire right, so it is so worth the time to actually incorporate intentionally these types of tools to help create that connection.

Traci Scherck: awesome Thank you so much Tina and if you’re looking for more from Tina Tina will be.

Traci Scherck: On the webinar that we are doing on Monday following with this podcast will be released.

Traci Scherck: And that’s in our talent optimization foundation program and that’s really taking the ideas and kind of those three areas that we talked about today and putting some actionable steps into how do we create trust within those dream teams and so Tina How else can individuals find you.

Tina Hallis: yeah I would recommend my website positive edge.net.

Tina Hallis: Tina at the positive edge.net is my email I love to hear from people brainstorm ideas get feedback.

Traci Scherck: Great awesome and Tina also has a download in that link will be in our show notes and it has some really great actionable items that we can do, based on research so with that Thank you so much for joining us today and have a great rest of your day.

Tina Hallis: Thank you.