Building Trust in High-Performing Teams

In this section, we present early findings from an action-research study on building trust in high-performing teams. The subjects of our analysis are teams from partner companies and a research group that are working together on a large-scale international project, around which a business ecosystem has formed.

The project is called "Globally scalable business models in health, exercise and wellbeing markets". In this project, global business creation comes together with top research, forming an ecosystem in the health, exercise, and wellbeing industries. Our vision is to bring together the relevant knowledge and the most talented people from all over the world, whether their passion is in business or in research, to create an ecosystem that helps our mission to bring sustainable business solutions for problems affecting health, exercise, and wellbeing.

The data was collected primarily through interviews with top-level managers from the partner companies. In this research, we are interested in finding out how trust develops and grows in the business ecosystem. How can the building of trust be supported? Can trust be managed? What is the relationship between trust and team performance?

Our preliminary findings reveal the importance of trust in team building. Trust has been built profoundly in the level of the project team. Most of the team members had worked together before, so they knew each other already and trust has been built through shared experiences, active communication, and mutually respective behaviour. The project consists of co-creation on different levels and, for example, in business modelling it is important to share critical information and personal ideas.

Our findings also show that the business partners do not commit fully to business network development without trust, both at the personal and business-concept levels. Enhancing trust needs a community of enrichment and regular interaction between all partners. Also, value creation and shared learning could be increased if high-trust relations could be built. One of the key ingredients for better communication is genuine listening and respecting other team members' ideas. This study has also shown that fact-based communication alone does not build personal relations. Trust takes time to develop, but without conscious actions like one-on-one meetings with different partners and team-building exercises, the probability for success decreases.