Teams and Trust

Building strong teams and establishing greater trust within those teams are essential steps to building a Culture Of Accountability, where people effectively collaborate and focus on achieving key results. Of course, this requires avoiding ineffective Below The Line actions and attitudes that are defensive, blame oriented, and non-productive. Such Below The Line tendencies render people and teams ineffective, lead to dangerous mistakes, and compromise end results.

Lockheed Martin, the largest military contractor in the world, is a major provider of
IT services, systems integration, and training to the U.S. Government. At their Greenville, South Carolina plant, they applied accountability and alignment principles to build trust and strengthen the team’s ability to deliver on their key results of refurbishing over two hundred C130 airplanes and two-dozen P3 Submarine Reconnaissance planes. Not only were they able to successfully execute on this aggressive initiative (a 20% increase in workload over the previous year), they did it while hitting their Zero Defects target. Bob Owen, Senior VP and Site General Manager had this to say about the journey: “We saw a notable culture change with an obvious increase in motivation, professionalism, and knowledge of processes. There was a visible display of the employees’ dedication and commitment… and a recognized increase in teamwork, cross-functional communication, and management’s commitment to process improvement and customer satisfaction.” As the team pulled together and delivered on their promises, trust soared.

When people effectively communicate with one another about what they are accountable to achieve and then follow-up in positive and principled ways, trust levels always increase. To learn more about how to establish a foundation of accountability that fosters trust and builds effective teams, join the Accountability Community at www.partnersinleadership.com, where you can review more accounts of teams and organizations that have actually done it.

Culture Of Accountability, Below The Line, and Accountability Community are all registered trademarks of Partners In Leadership Inc.