Want Collaboration? Build Trust.
©Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D.

If today's business organizations only knew what they know, they'd be in possession of the most powerful tool they could ask for -- the collective wisdom and experience of their entire workforce.

But they don't. That's because "collective" requires collaboration and sharing, and sharing requires trust. And trust, unfortunately, is something that today's business organizations aren't very good at fostering. Not yet, anyway, which is tantalizing, because unshared knowledge is like the latent power in a battery. It's there itching to be utilized -- but useless until it's connected to something. What's worse, it's utterly ignorant of its own potential until that connection is made.

Each of us knows all kinds of things we know we know, and all kinds of things we don't know we know. Our memory banks are crammed full of images, experiences, facts, fantasies, rational constructs, irrational schemes, plans for the future, recollections of the past that have accumulated over the years.

The things we know we know are the things we consciously apply to our daily lives. The things we don't know we know lie in storage, waiting to be "discovered" if/when they are needed. Taken together, those bits of knowledge, hunches, perceptions, and intuitions equip every one of us with the potential to perform quite amazing feats of problem-solving.

Because that, in evolutionary language, is what we human beings are: world-class problem solvers. Put just two of us together, working in concert -- connect those human batteries -- and you get the X ray, or the airplane, or the comic genius of Laurel and Hardy. Hook up 20 of us, as the British did in WWII, and you crack the German military code. Put the problem-solving capacity of an entire corporate workforce together, and...!

Except it doesn't happen that way in most organizations, and that's because the motivation to share knowledge is so closely aligned with the level of trust. Even the motivation for individuals to contribute information to an electronic database is largely dependent on the relationship of the members who use the system. If individuals do not trust others with their knowledge, or don't trust that others will contribute in kind, it is unlikely that the system will be effective. Technology can facilitate knowledge sharing, but it is trust that enables it. The reality, too often, is a lack of trust that disables it.

I recently conducted a survey of 200 middle managers around the country in an attempt to pinpoint the state of trust and knowledge sharing in their various organizations. What I found was a crisis of trust: suspicious and cynical employees are disinclined to trust managers and co-workers with their ideas and knowledge. And despite lots of lip service to the contrary, corporate leaders still don't trust employees with the kind of open communication that is the foundation of informed collaboration.

As a result, an immense volume of problem-solving capacity is lost to business enterprises every day. Companies are wasting the brainpower that could save billions. Or lead to the discovery of a revolutionary new process or product. Or, in the current economic climate, help keep them afloat when others are sinking! And individuals are losing the opportunity to work in the kind of high-trust environment that energizes teams, releases creative contribution and makes working together both productive and joyful.

Trusting is not a matter of blind deference, but of placing - or refusing to place - trust with good judgement. Trust is fragile, and
building it isn't easy. There's no quick fix. Built slowly over time, it grows as people take small risks and wait for those acts of faith to be justified and reciprocated. And, unless there are reserves of trust, it can be destroyed overnight.

But if you want people to tell what they know, it is essential.

I found five areas where low trust leads to lost knowledge:

1. Trust in yourself and in the value of your contribution
My latest book, Ghost Story: A Modern Business Fable, features a character who doesn't share knowledge because she believes she has nothing to contribute. Dot (the book's heroine) is an example of what educators refer to as "unconscious competence." Simply put, she doesn't know what she knows. And, because she is outranked and intimidated in all team discussions, she believes her input has no value. (In the end, it is her courage, strength, and innate wisdom that save the day, but that -- quite literally -- is another story.)

Human beings are a "teaching/learning species." We take pride in the specific knowledge we've accumulated, we enjoy adding to our expertise, and we gets a psychological lift from communicating our knowledge to others. But to be a vital contributor, we must believe that our opinions and insights matter, and that our knowledge and experience (regardless of job title) are valuable to someone else. Unless people trust the innate wisdom and creativity of their ideas, there is little impetus to offer them to others.

2. Trust between team members
Even in good times, people are reluctant to share information with others when they don't know them well enough to evaluate their trustworthiness. Toss in high turnover, mass layoffs and early retirements, and it becomes extremely challenging to develop the mutual trust necessary to build strong relationships throughout the organization. Yet, too often, in the rush to get started on a new project, people are grouped together and told to "get to work."

Well-placed trust grows out of experience and interaction - usually extended over time by talking and asking questions, by listening and seeing how well claims to know and actions hold up. We need organizations and leaders that allow us to judge where to place our trust.

Effective teams have learned that the time to get to know one another and to build valuable "social capital" at the beginning of a project leads to the kinds of trusting relationships that pay off in increased productivity later on.

3. Trust in the team's leader
If team members don't trust the team leader, they simply stop contributing. Regardless of the overall corporate culture, individual managers and team leaders can create mini-cultures of trust within their own work group or staff. The best of these leaders do so by taking the time and effort necessary to make people feel safe and valued. They emphasize people's strengths while encouraging the sharing of mistakes and lessons learned. They set clear expectations for outcomes and clarify individual roles. They help all members recognize what each of them brings to the team. They model openness, vulnerability and honesty. They tell stories of group successes -- and even the lessons learned in failures. They share the credit and the reward or recognition. And, most of all, they encourage and respect everyone's input.

4. Trust in the importance of the project
People are not likely to care about collaborating on projects they feel are unworthy of their contribution (a derisive term for this kind of project is WOMBAT -- Waste Of Money, Brains And Time). Conversely, human beings naturally share information when there is a compelling, emotional reason to do so, or when working on a project they believe has real meaning and importance. Part of the leader's role is to clearly illustrate the organization's business need for the fruits of a team's collaboration, and to let all team members see how they will personally be learning and growing through the open exchange of ideas.

5. Management's trust in the workforce
It is no secret, in this post-Enron era, that organizational leaders face a "crisis of credibility." Buidling back a workforce's trust in senior management begins with open communication. People learn what is important to leadership by the actions they see modeled by those leaders. Too often, employees see leadership saying that knowledge sharing is essential, but still regularly withholding information it deems unsuitable or inappropriate for employees. Employees also see leadership giving lip service encouragement to the idea of collaborative input, when what it's really seeking is a rubber stamp for decisions already made.

In any organization, the way information is handled determines whether it becomes an obstacle to or an enabler of trust. In the Industrial Age, information management was deliberately obstructive as a matter of policy. Employees weren't expected to contribute to decision making or problem solving, so the information they were given was restricted to the bare minimum management felt they needed to do their particular jobs.

Today, informed collaboration is increasingly seen as essential for organizational success, and leaders need to demonstrate trust by insuring that employees have easy access to details -- terrifying or not -- regarding every aspect of the business, including finances, competitive products/services, and organizational strategy. This calls for an increased investment in educational and personal development programs so that employees have enough practical background to utilize the business data being shared.

Human beings thrive in trusting relationships. Given the right context, they can do great things together. As one respondent to my survey said, "There is a phenomenal sense of accomplishment in achieving as a group what could not have been achieved as individuals." Knowledge can only be volunteered. Leaders can't force people to collaborate. But in a culture of trust, collaboration and knowledge sharing naturally abound.

Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D. is an international speaker, consultant, and author of nine books, including "Ghost Story: A Modern Business Fable" about the power of collaboration and knowledge sharing. Copyright 2002.