How do we bring to life the 7 Leadership Commitments discussed in last month’s blog to form this hypothetical “elite team”?

I’m a huge fan of the Personal Histories exercise to help us build Trust and Respect.

According to Patrick Lencioni, with this exercise, we can build trust on our teams in less than 2 hours. Yes, you read that right. It’s not too good to be true and I’ll tell you WHY and HOW.

The Personal Histories exercise involves your leadership team sharing their responses to three questions:

Where did you grow up?
How many siblings do you have and where do you fall in that order?
Describe a unique or interesting challenge or experience from your childhood.

Once everyone answers, ask team members to share what they learned about one another that they didn't already know. Even if the team has been together for 10+ years, you will be shocked to learn things about your peers that you never knew.

This will only work if everyone participates. As the leader, you may want to go first to demonstrate your commitment to openness. Trust can only exist in an atmosphere of vulnerability. Being vulnerable is uncomfortable, but I promise it will be worth it.

Going through this exercise will help you understand why each person acts the way they do and will enable you to give each other grace. It switches the tone from judgment of each other’s weaknesses to having productive discussions around them.

When we understand each other, we work better together. It can be difficult to spend most of our waking hours with our peers and know next to nothing about how they’re wired. Imagine doing this in your own household. You would go crazy. To be more harmonious and unified, we have to understand each other, and this is a low-risk way of doing so. I suggest following this exercise up with the Working Genius Assessment to maximize team productivity (more on the Working Genius model here).

You may also want to ask these three questions during the interview process. Either when interviewing potential candidates or when you are interviewing for a new role. Use it in place of the ‘tell me about yourself’ question. It will help you get to know the real person.

After all, there is only one YOU. The more vulnerable we are in showing others who that is, the easier it will be to show up to work, trust each other, and be one step closer to functioning as a high-performing team.

Click here to download the handout: Personal Histories Exercise