No Trust Falls

There are better ways to build mutual trust

We work with a lot of engineers in our leadership training, and we often share something we learned early on: ENGINEERS DON’T DO TRUST FALLS.

When you are choosing to build mutual trust on a team, don’t take people that far out of their comfort zone. Having a lot of relative strangers putting their hands on someone’s body also seems like an HR problem waiting to happen. And many introverts don’t read nonverbal cues very well—they can’t read the intentions of others from their facial expressions and body language. In short, they don’t know that they CAN trust those other people. Why risk it?

To build mutual trust in a team with a lot of introverts, consider activities that demonstrate their COMPETENCE to one another, rather than their intentions. Consider a trivia contest with teams, or a collaborative project in which the team builds a structure from paper drinking straws, or pairing up partners to each teach the other a new skill over lunch.

(image source: https://gwensmith.net/the-trust-fall/)