Lab 1: Trust

In Discord > Everyone

What is trust? (5 min)

• All effective teams operate on trust. Trust is what makes teammates feel psychologically safe, which empowers them to communicate effectively, take risks, and resolve conflicts.
• To build trust with your teammates, you have to know each others goals, motivations, and intents.
• This requires a few challenging things: vulnerability and transparency.
  • Honesty means telling the truth, or as much of it as you feel safe sharing without violating your privacy.
  • Vulnerability means exposing yourself to support, recognition, and validation, but also criticism. The more vulnerable you are, the more your teammates will trust you.
  • Transparency, which requires vulnerability, means sharing things. What are your fears? What are your goals? The more you transparent you are about your motivations, the more your teammates will trust you.
• Your TA will share an example of being vulnerable and transparent within their role as a TA.

Practice vulnerability (15 min)

In Discord > Role Channels

In Discord we've created separate voice channels for PMs, Designers, and Developers, each with a capacity of 5, plus one extra seat for the TA, in case they need to join.

1. Join the voice channel that corresponds to your role.
2. Take turns introducing yourselves, your names, your major.
3. Take turns sharing why you enrolled in this class. Be honest.
4. Take turns sharing what other priorities matter to you this quarter, in and out of class. Be transparent.
5. Take turns sharing your biggest fears about taking on this role in this class. Be vulnerable.

Reflect on these motivations and fears, and prepare to share them with your teammates.

Build trust with your team (25 min)

In Discord > Team Channels

Leave the role channel you're in and go to your team's channel in Discord. Take turns answering questions 3-5 above, this time with your teammates.  The more honestly and transparently answer these questions, the more trust your team will have.

After you're done sharing, reconsider your roles:

• Is your PM sufficiently organized to manage the project? What are they lacking?
• Is your Designer sufficiently resourced to do lead the design work in the first third of class? What are they lacking?
• Are your developers sufficiently skilled and resourced to lead the engineering in the last two thirds of class? What are they lacking?
• What implications do your answers above have on what your team is capable of creating this quarter?

Individually, for lab credit, submit a reflection in Canvas on how your sharing impacted your perception of your teammates and your perception of your team overall. This will be pass/fail credit, in recognition of your participation and reflection.