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Project Management National Conference 2011 PMI India

Trust Is A Tool in Projects

Debasis Chakrabarti, PMP,
Assistant Professor, Asian School of Business Management

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Application of Select Tools of Psychology for Effective Project Management


Contents

1 Abstract..............................................................................................................................4
2 Key Words .........................................................................................................................4
3 Introduction : Project, Partnership, Trust : What a PM should do?...................................4
4 Trust : Simple or Complex? What does existing literature say? ......................................5
5 Challenge : Generation, Development and Maintenance of trust .....................................6
6 Study of Challenges, Lessons & Key Factor : .................................................................7
7 Trust in Enterprise Environment: Maria (from Head Office) and Dave (PM)...................8
8 Executing with Trust: Igor Ivanov (Director) and Dave (PM)...........................................8
9 Trust, Emotional Intelligence and Teamwork: Dave (PM) and Luiza Green ( HVAC
Engineer)................................................................................................................................9
10 Trusted Vendor: Shabbir Al Hashem (Client) and Dave (PM)......................................10
11 Trusted Customer: Peter (Vendor) and Dave (PM)......................................................11
12 Conclusion : Be a Superman(ager) ................................................................................12
13 References......................................................................................................................13
14 Author’s Profile .............................................................................................................14

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1 Abstract

While referring to the role of a project manager, in its very first chapter PMBOK-4
underlines personal skills to be of equal importance as area specific skills,
general management proficiency, knowledge and performance. PMBOK-4 further
enumerates leadership, team building, motivation, communication, influencing,
decision making, political & cultural awareness and negotiation skills as key
interpersonal skills of an effective project manager. To start with, a project
manager deals with his/her own organizational norms, culture, structure and
influences. S/he in turn has to influence the organization to suit the objectives
and interests of the project. Subsequently s/he has to manage conflict within the
project team and also has to regularly handle conflicting stakeholder interests
with an aim to arrive at a win-win situation for all concerned. Thus a project
manager becomes a partner in multitudes of formal and informal groups and sub
groups, cutting across disciplines, specializations, interest groups, hierarchy and
even cutting across organizations. Being a trusted professional is therefore a key
to success, adding immense value to the business of project management. In
this context the author explores and analyzes the simple yet complex concept of
trust: from the psychological viewpoint, from the point of emotional intelligence
and from general management perspective. Extensive study and analysis of
literature across specializations are supplemented by real life case studies
depicting generation, development and maintenance of trust. Finally the paper
recommends and suggests management of trust as a key differentiator between
project success and failure.

2 Key Words

Leadership, Influence, Trust, PMBOK.

3 Introduction : Project, Partnership, Trust :
What a PM should do?

Projects are unique and temporary: carried out during a limited time period,
within a budget, for the achievement of a predetermined objective. Project team
is a group of subject experts drawn from different sources, both internally or
externally by the organization for the duration of the project itself, under a project
manager’s lead, orientation and management.

Project management focuses on managing two equally important aspects: tasks
and relationships. Formal management tools and software are available for the
smooth undertaking of tasks, which might cover planning, scheduling,

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monitoring, controlling etc and can be performed by subject experts. However,
handling complex relationships within the workplace depends mostly on the
individual skills of the Project Manager (PM).

While referring to PM’s role, PMBOK-4 underlines personal skills to be of equal
importance as area specific skills, general management proficiency, knowledge
and performance. Subsequently PMBOK-4 enumerates leadership, team
building, motivation, communication, influencing, decision making, political &
cultural awareness and negotiation skills as key interpersonal skills of an
effective PM.

Project Manager is the face of the project to the outside world encompassing
own organisation and beyond. As a common link between all stakeholders PM
partners them in numerous sub groups formed on common interests and goals,
cutting across complex multi organisation matrices vertically, horizontally and
diagonally at various levels and planes. Some groups are formal, while some are
partnerships without established chain of commands. Interests and goals of
member(s) of many such groups might differ and even clash. To partner and
then to manage expectations of such groups while remaining within the ethical
limits and to create a win-win situation for all concerned seems an impossible
task. Yet an effective PM manages this by virtue of being a trusted partner in
every group.

4 Trust : Simple or Complex? What does
existing literature say?

“Trust is the reliance by one person, group, or firm upon ......... duty on the part of
another person, group, or firm to recognize and protect the rights and interests of
all others engaged in a joint endeavor or economic exchange.”

Trust is “the expectation … of ethically justifiable behavior – that is, morally
correct decisions and actions based upon ethical principles of analysis.”

- L.T. Hosmer, “Trust: The Connecting Link Between Organizational Theory
and Philosophical Ethics,” Academy of Management Review, 20, 1995, p.
393, 399

Fukuyama (1996) views trust as an economic lubricant which reduces
transactions costs, enables new forms of cooperation and generally furthers
business activities, employment and prosperity.

Barbara Misztal lists three basic things that trust does in the lives of people:
makes social life predictable, creates a sense of community, makes it easier for
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people to work together. Projects, being unique, have unpredictability. Trust
brings some welcome predictability in the team, and the community sense makes
working together mutually beneficial.

Dirks & Ferrin (2001) suggest that people work together, contribute individually
and achieve success through trust. Where trust is absent, projects can fail. In his
popular blog called Project Shrink, Bas de Baar (2007) states trust as essential
and, “mutual trust” as the most essential ingredient for successful projects, and
therefore a core concept for Project Management.

“Trust is the “undertaking of a risky course of action on the confident expectation
that all persons involved in the action will act competently and dutifully.” …- J.D.
Lewis and A. Weigert, “Trust as a Social Reality,” Social Forces, 63, 1985, 971

Trust is the belief that the trusted party will meet expectations. There are two
parties in a trust environment: the trusted and the trustor. Trustor demonstrates
willingness to be vulnerable to the actions of Trusted: Trustor is confident about
Trusted’s beneficial behaviour and actions. This is a situation of absolute trust
where Trustor is vulnerable because s/he stands a risk of harm if Trusted does
not behave according to the expectation, more so when Trustor cannot control or
enforce actions performed by Trusted.

People with known conflicting interests operate and cooperate in projects, where
absolute trust remains utopian. Yet some working trust is needed to operate at
the zone between confidence in facts known, and opportunities from unknowns.
Without trust, all new possibilities would always be considered a negative risk,
causing inaction. Therefore stakeholders need to trust others as working partners
to maximize efforts to enhance positive risks. They however limit their
vulnerability and try to establish working trust- the minimum level between
partners needed to attain common goals. One way of establishing working trust
is mutual trust: when both parties act as trustor and trusted to each other.

5 Challenge : Generation, Development and
Maintenance of trust

“Trust... the judgment one makes on the basis of one's past interactions with
others that they will seek to act in ways that favor one's interests, rather than
harm them, in circumstances that remain to be defined.”

- E. Lorenz, “Trust, Contract and Economic
Cooperation,” Cambridge Journal of Economics, 23, 1999, p. 305

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Past history plays an important role to answer: “Do I have the confidence and
faith to rely on the other party?” Reputation of honoring promises and
commitments play a vital role in developing and maintaining trust. Generating
trust for the first instance is comparatively difficult. Yet, trust is a bet on possibility
of future benefits. Once the bet is placed, Trustor suspends his (her) disbelief:
possibility of a negative course of action is not considered any more. Thus trust
generates cooperation by reducing indecisiveness and allowing actions that are
otherwise impossible to consider.

“Trust is a person's “expectations, assumptions, or beliefs about the likelihood
that another's future actions will be beneficial, favorable, or at least not
detrimental to one's interests.” -- S.L. Robinson, “Trust and Breach of the
Psychological Contract,” Administrative Science Quarterly, 41, 1996, p. 576

PM’s behaviour, action and communication must enhance the expectation of his
would be partner(s) about himself: that the PM will behave or respond in a
predictable and mutually expected manner. The quantum of trust will be minor
initially, but each time it is honoured, trustworthiness of the PM will grow.

On the other hand, vulnerability of the trustor keeps trust in a fragile state, and
trust needs just one betrayal of faith to disappear, often permanently. Thus the
PM must take extra care to be seen as a person who keeps promises, and in the
rare cases where s/he is unable to, it must be demonstrated that there were
sincere efforts from the PM’s side to honour trust.

“Trust … is letting other persons (natural or artificial, such as firms, nations, etc.)
take care of something the trustor cares about, where such 'caring for' involves
some exercise of discretionary powers.”

- A. Baier, “Trust and Antitrust,” Ethics, 96, 1986, pp. 234, 235, 240

6 S t u d y o f C h a l l e n g e s , L e s s

Everyday in the life of a project manager is a case study. This paper analyses
five conversations between a PM and other stakeholders; subsequently
discusses challenges faced and lessons learnt; finally the common key factor is
sought, and the benefits stated. The five scenarios are different and try to cover
all five project management process groups and all nine knowledge areas,
including many of the individual processes feature in the cases. Subsequent
analyses identify them, by underscoring, as well as demonstrate trust as a potent
and common tool in each of the different scenarios.

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7 Trust in Enterprise Environment: Maria
(from Head Office) and Dave (PM).

• Maria: Dave, I have news! Jack is taking over as Engineering Head. You
have good equations with him, ask him for a treat !

• Dave: That’s great! Jack understands my needs of early release of drawings.
I think now things will speed up. I will try to get him depute an additional
designer and a couple of draughtsman....

• Maria: Dave, this is not official yet, don’t just call Jack. Wait till Monday.

• Dave: Nope, I might call him to have a family dinner this weekend. Not going
to talk business till its official. Trust me.

• Maria: I trust you. That’s why I called you.

PM is subject to influences of the organization: even in projectized or strong
matrix set-up functional managers play vital roles. PM understands these
realities and in turn influences his organization to acquire his temporary project
team. Developing and maintaining formal or informal partnership with players in
the HO or the PMO helps the key interpersonal skill “Political and Cultural
Awareness”,

Mutual trust between Dave and Maria trust allows communication of this timely,
relevant and probably confidential information - about a vital change in the
organization. Dave can now plan to enhance his opportunity in his process of
acquiring project team.

8 Executing with Trust: Igor Ivanov (Director)
and Dave (PM).

• Dave: Good afternoon Mr Ivanov. Sorry I phoned on a holiday.

• Igor: Its alright Dave, you have my permission to call me 24x7. Must be
important.

• Dave: Yes. Transformers are arriving soon, but plinths are not ready. I
planned 100 extra hands for 15 days in agreement with our contractor
RAVCO. Now they are not providing that manpower. I had a one to one talk
with Imad from RAVCO to know the inside story. Actually RAVCO is

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planning to terminate some guys due to recession, so others are sitting tight
on whatever resources they have. Imad needs our unofficial help. Will you
please talk to Haroon Shabibi, he will not be able to refuse you.

• Igor: Shabibi, their MD, right?

• Dave: That’s the one. Sorry, need your help. This is beyond my level.

• Igor: Consider it done Dave. You will have your resources. Get the plinths
ready.

• Dave: Thanks Mr Ivanov. You will have plinths well in time. One more thing,
Imad requested his name not to be mentioned, I promised him that.

• Igor: Don’t worry about that, I won’t mention Imad.

While monitoring and controlling the project PM faced a non-conformity from the
vendor’s side: with a potential to seriously impact schedule and cost baselines
and affect all other aspects of project management plan including staffing
management plan. Considering the urgency, PM chose to exercise interactive
communication with his vendor to identify the root cause behind the non-
conformity. The cause was linked to enterprise environment factors beyond
immediate control of the PM. Therefore the PM successfully used his partnership
with the Sponsor to mitigate the risk.

Trust played a vital role in the frank communication between the sub vendor and
the PM and again in the communication between the Sponsor and the PM.

9 Trust, Emotional Intelligence and Teamwork:
Dave (PM) and Luiza Green ( HVAC Engineer)

• Luiza: Dave, there is a change request from Client. They now want
airconditioning in the corridor too. They are ready to pay the additional
charges, and give a time extension.

• Dave: Congrats Lu! In fact, we anticipated this long back, and listed this as a
positive risk. See the risk register; we have a response plan ready.

• Luiza: Already seen that Dave, problem is Sandra from Architecture is acting
stubborn. She doesn’t want to incorporate changes in her drawings.

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• Dave: I guess her action has something to do with the argument you had with
her in the last meeting over her colour schemes! Anyways, let me handle this,
I will talk to her first, then we can have a meeting involving her, you and the
others. This should be through.

• Luiza: Thanks...

• Dave: One more thing Luiza, let this be a lesson. Both you and Sandra are
technical experts, and passionate about your work. Yet, at times one needs
to empathize with the other’s view. I will also tell Sandra this. We are a team,
together let’s make best of this opportunity.

• Luiza: Sure Dave, I will remember the advice. Thanks a lot.

Dave here manages a team issue: conflict between two project team members
by using soothing technique followed by collaboration. Dave converts the threat
from this conflict to an opportunity to set ground rules in his ‘develop project
team’ process, to take the team from ‘norming’ to ‘performing” stage and to
improve the team’s Emotional Intelligence - ability to understand oneself and to
understand others.

Dave demonstrates leadership and influencing skills, essential for a PM to
manage project team. But he is likely to succeed because he trusts his own
abilities and trusts his team, and they trust him in return.

10 Trusted Vendor: Shabbir Al Hashem (Client)
and Dave (PM).

• Dave: Good morning Mr Hashem.

• Hashem: Very good morning Dave. What brings you to my office?

• Dave: I have a problem. Its about the machines you refused to inspect and
give despatch clearance. They are excellent products.

• Hashem: They might be, but they are from your factory in South East Asia.
You were supposed to manufacture them in Europe. Its in the Contract.

• Dave: Mr Hashem, my apologies. Contract says “will be manufactured as per
European specifications”. It doesn’t say to be manufactured in Europe. Take
my words; these are manufactured with the same quality of our European
Plant.
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• Hashem: But we wanted them manufactured in Europe. We feel betrayed.

• Dave: We can divert these ready machines to another project, but even if we
start re-manufacturing yours as priority in Europe, it will take six months. You
and I need to commission this project before summer.

• Hashem: This is not correct Dave. I am disappointed.

• Dave: Trust me, these machines are equally good. I promise, for your next
order we will manufacture them in our European plant. I will ask Max from
marketing to put this specifically in our offer. I will also speak to Mueller, our
global manufacturing head if necessary. But this time...need your help.

• Hashem: Ok, Dave, I know you keep promises. I will send my engineer to
inspect.

Communication gap between stakeholders during “Collect Requirement” process
surfaced during ‘Verify Scope’ process as a conflict between interests of the
manufacturer and the Client. The PM chose interactive communication to
manage ‘Stakeholder Expectations’. Dave reminded Hashem about their
partnership with common goal of commissioning. He avoided gold plating but
offered to include Client’s specific requirement in next project, demonstrating
willingness and ability to forge new partnerships cutting across levels.

There is every indication that this PM and executives from the marketing
department enjoyed mutual trust, enabling Dave to make this promise and
increase the opportunity for his organization to bag a new order. Dave also
enjoyed trust of Hashem. This trust played a vital role in creating this win-win
environment.

11 Trusted Customer: Peter (Vendor) and Dave
(PM).

• Peter: Hi Dave, Glad to know you have joined this project as PM. .

• Dave: Thanks Peter. Nice to see you too. That last project we worked
together was three years ago. In fact I was going through the vendor lists.
Very happy to see your name.

• Peter: Right, those were great times. Working with you is always great.

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• Dave: Peter, I think you were to deliver your last six units this month to
complete your scope. What happened? Anything wrong?

• Peter: Sorry Dave, your guys are yet to pay me for the last consignment. I
can only supply once my dues are cleared, plus I need advance payment for
the new consignment.

• Dave: Well Peter, I promise I will look into the issue and sort it out. You see I
just joined this team, need to know the backgrounds. But now I need at least
three units. The commisioning is affected. Just send me three please?

• Peter: But...

• Dave: Don’t you trust me? You see, this supply will improve my negotiating
power with my guys. Help me to help you, Peter?

• Peter: Yes Dave, I trust you. Okay, you will get three units by next week.

• Dave: That’s excellent Peter. The rest you send only after I look into the
issue and then we will talk further, right?

A supplier has a conflict of interest with the project team. His resulting actions
are akin to a contract change request. The new PM has to administer
procurements, review the payment system and find out the reason behind the
non-conformity from either parties. At the same time the vendor is required to
perform, otherwise project baselines are at risk. The PM quickly forms a
partnership based on trust generated during a previous project.

His immediate concern is addressed, but to maintain mutual trust, Peter has to
deliver the materials and Dave has to deliver his promise.

12 Conclusion : Be a Superman(ager)

In each of the cases mentioned, project disasters were avoided and Dave saved
undisclosed yet significant amount of time and money. He improved morale and
created win- win situations for the stakeholders. Dave used different tools and
techniques suitable for each case depending on the process and knowledge
areas to be managed in integrated manner (PMBOK processes, knowledge
areas and tools are underscored in the analysis paragraphs directly after each
case).

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One tool remained common in every case: Trust. Dave made conscious efforts to
generate, develop and maintain trustworthiness. He used trust as a potent tool to
resolve each issue. Trust made him an effective asset to his organization, a
leading positive influence in project environment; and a trusted partner to all
stakeholders. Trust supplemented his other PM skills.

The cases are all real. Names, situations and locations are changed though.
Experienced PMs would still empathize with them. They face such situations
everyday and use their experience/instinct to handle them. Some of them may
not know why they are successful or not-so-successful. This article intends to
contribute to the field of project management by revealing one secret weapon of
successful PMs, and by encouraging other PMs to become equally effective.

Let every PM use trust as a tool, be a superman(ager) like Dave and build the
nation!!!

13 References

1. de Baar, Bas, “Treehugger Project management: Is Trust Important?”
http://www.basdebaar.com/treehugger-project-management-trust-48.html

2. Dirks, Kurt T & Ferrin, Donald L, (2001), “The Role of Trust in Organizational
Settings”, ORGANIZATION SCIENCE Vol. 12, No. 4, July-August 2001, pp.
450-467, DOI: 10.1287/orsc.12.4.450.10640

3. James, Harvey S. (2010) "World Database of Trust"
http://web.missouri.edu/~jamesha/trust/index.htm.

4. Misztal, Barbara, (1996) “Trust in Modern Societies: The Search for the
Bases of Social Order”, Polity Press, ISBN 0-7456-1634-8.

5. Fukuyama, F. (1996), “Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of
Prosperity”, Touchstone Books.

6. Project Management Institute (2008), A Guide To The Project Management
Book of Knowledge (PMBOK) – Fourth Edition

7. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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14 Author’s Profile

Debasis Chakrabarti, PMP, is an M.Tech in Operations Research &
Business Management from REC Durgapur and B.Sc. Civil Engineering
from REC Kurukshetra. He has around 25 years of experience. Prior to
moving into academics he worked in project divisions of globally reputed
multinationals in India and the Middle East Asia.

debasis.chakraborty@asbm.ac.in,

dc1964@rediffmail.com

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