(2024-01-07) Cutler Tbm265 Rebuilding Trust And Breaking Free From Trust Proxies And The Swirl

John Cutler: TBM 265: Rebuilding Trust and Breaking Free From Trust Proxies and The Swirl. We will explore how trust issues—especially among senior leaders—can greatly impact an organization (and why it is so hard to address these issues).

When teams don't trust each other, and they don't want to have the hard conversations to rebuild that trust ("really work it out"), they tend to look for proxies:

• They debate surface-level things (like methodologies, practices, etc.)
• They look to processes or systems as a quick fix for the lack of trust.
• They make hollow concessions meant primarily to "put out the fire."
• They single out individuals to blame for the situation.*

How do you break the cycle?

Labeling the proxies can go a long way. All too often, the proxies become the problem and give us a convenient way to ignore the underlying issue.

Try to understand that some uncomfortably high percentage of what you're observing is a byproduct of the wicked loop, not individuals being bad. See (2021-11-28) A Diagram of Effects of the AntiPatterns in a Product/Dev Team.