Five Questions to Build Trust

This is always an exciting time of the year in college basketball. It's preseason, official practices have just begun, and every team in the nation is undefeated! Everyone is full of anticipation and high expectations. In the midst of this ramp up to the season, we have begun weekly discussions with our coaching staff. We're all reading Patrick Lencioni's The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, and I lead a roughly 20-minute discussion of a section of the book during a staff meeting. At the conclusion of the discussion, I pray, and then leave as the staff meeting continues.

As we were walking through the discussions, last week we observed the team in the book participating in some team development exercises. As the discussion was winding down, I suggested we use one of those exercises among our team. The coaches agreed and yesterday we did it. Below are the five questions we asked each staff person to answer and some insights from the exercise follow the questions.

1. What is your hometown?
2. How many siblings do you have?
3. Tell us about any unique childhood hobbies you had.
4. What was your greatest challenge growing up?
5. What was your first job?

The staff room was full of a wide variety of young men. I am by far the eldest (66), the youngest being a 23-year-old grad assistant, with most of the full-time coaches being between 35 and 40. The group included our strength and conditioning coach and the athletic trainer (physio). Our group is varied in hometown regions of the USA, in ethnicity, and socio-economic background.

One of the younger full-time coaches asked to share first, and he set the tone with remarkable vulnerability, offering many more details than anyone expected, and speaking about family dysfunction very openly. Most others followed in kind, a few being less open with details, but with all sharing freely. This process took 50 minutes, but I never saw any signal of annoyance, anyone looking anxiously at his watch, or any other sign of being less than engaged.

We all learned things about our coaching colleagues, and I learned a great many things that will serve as open doors to further discussions with individuals. One such conversation happened just three hours later on the practice floor as one of the grad assistant coaches spoke openly about his broken relationship with his father and siblings. We had a remarkably vulnerable conversation for several minutes, ending with some encouragement for him and his respectful, honorable attitude.

I would encourage you to use this or a similar tool to invite people to open their hearts to each other. This builds trust and bonds teams. It's worth the time, it's worth the risk, it's worth the effort.