Trust Catalyst Assessment: Working Together To Be Better
From Benchmark Communication, Inc., the CreatingWE ™ Institute, the Team TRUST Catalyst Tool is a great assessment for teams looking to grow and build on successes together. The assessment evaluates team and individual performance of specific behaviors that relate to the 5 different dimensions of trust.
1. Transparency
2. Relationship
3. Understanding
4. Shared Success
5. Truth Telling
Providing both a self and team aggregate score, it also produces individual reports that provide your self-assessment and your team assessment in each of those 5 trust dimensions.
The TRUST Assessment is helpful because it is so specific in the questions it asks about the behaviors being measured. It asks 5 paired questions in each dimension of trust. For example, some questions included are:
· Do I take the time to clarify the meanings of words, concepts, and practices?
· How frequently do people in our culture ask clarifying questions to build understanding?
· How often do I share and discuss what’s really on my mind with others to intentionally reduce fears about what’s happening?
The specificity is the differentiator between the Team TRUST Catalyst in comparison to other assessments. When I debrief the assessment, the group tends to quickly come to a common set of behaviors that they want to change to foster a better working relationship and are able to work specifically on those behaviors. That is just helpful! And it gives people a conversation path with polarizing topics, they need to discuss, without personality coming into play. The conversation stops being about “how Bob does this and that” and turns into “I appreciate this behavior and find it helpful”. The tool also demonstrates to teams the places they will find success together and how to eliminate areas in which success would be difficult. With this information, the team can leverage their strengths and work on their weaknesses to promote the successes of the team. Teams have the opportunity to be candid and transparent due to the focus on trust building behaviors and data specific aspect of the assessment.
At the end of the assessment, customized questions can be created for the client. Those questions can be helpful for narrative responses that allow people to share, in a semi anonymous way, what is working and what’s not. We have not found another assessment that is solely focused on team dynamics and assesses the present positive behaviors (and not the negative).
For example, I have used the tool to help a CEO who did not believe there were trust problems on the team, however, there were. The assessment helped this leader see that there was a problem and enabled them to act on it. Leaders are often the last to know that the relationships with their direct reports are broken. TRUST provides a safer way to show this relationship because the data can be used as a catalyst to act upon. It can also be used with a team who knows there’s a problem but don’t know how to fix it. It helps them reset and reshape the culture.
I try to use this assessment in every Executive Team engagement that I facilitate. It’s good for newly forming teams, teams facing change, teams that are metabolizing internal and external change, as well as teams in advance of subsequent succession. Following an appropriate amount of time, there is also a chance to retake it as a group to see how you have improved over time. That group aggregate is accessibly priced. The assessment seems to be most helpful with senior leaders and middle managers, while it seems not as helpful for front line leaders -- of course, this all depends on the team. The TRUST Catalyst Tool can only be assessed through an executive briefing, a transformational engagement, or a workshop.
If you have more questions, or would like the opportunity to use this assessment with your team, please reach out to Jennifer@voltageleadership.com.
