Vulnerability in the workplace! I must be crazy. In my career, I’ve encountered these beliefs: at work, you always have to be professional, hide your emotions, and not share too much about who you are. Robots, basically!
Yet, how can you trust a colleague if you don’t know who they are, what drives them, or what they’re going through right now? How can you dare to share things with them if they don’t share anything themselves? How can you dare to be yourself and bring all your talent to the company if you’re hiding?
In one of my recent posts, I discussed Lencioni’s model and the importance of building trust to align teams. [Link in comments]
The good news is that trust is the hardest thing to work on. Once it’s in place, a large part of the process is accomplished. But how do we do it?
First, start small. No need to share major traumas that took years of therapy to overcome. It’s better to start smoothly. Here’s an exercise inspired by Philippe Steufken, which he uses brilliantly in his networking events.
Each team member writes down something unexpected they did as a child (e.g., “I was a water polo champion”). All the papers are mixed up, and each person draws one at random. The goal is to guess who the paper belongs to. There are always a few surprises when you learn that the quiet colleague did stand-up comedy in school or that ‘Mrs prim and proper’ was in a punk rock band, especially with photos or videos to back it up. 😉
You can take the exercise a step further by sharing one of your greatest achievements and one of your biggest challenges. There you can already see who’s willing to play along and who remains reserved and superficial.
Once the ice is broken, personality models are great for building trust. They create a common language and bring neutrality. Each profile is presented with its strengths and challenges, making it easier to talk about yourself, your talents, and your pitfalls when described through a profile.
Our preferred model at 9 CUBE is the Enneagram! And if we can use it in combination with a Jungian model (e.g., MBTI), even better. So, why the Enneagram? Because we are not robots! We have emotions and instinctive reactions. The Enneagram is the only model that covers cognitive, emotional, and instinctive aspects.
Moreover, the Enneagram reveals the hidden side of our personality, the part we might not be fully aware of or struggle to put into words. It explains what motivates each of our actions and what triggers each of our reactions.
So, ready to build trust?
Dare to be vulnerable to build trust!
