Agreements of Trust

Working with organizations over time, Levine says he has discovered that most organizations have a habit of moving to action before they have achieved any kind of clarity about their direction.

"The complexity increases when joint vision and joint action are added to the mix," he has written. "I have found that when people have a 'conversational road map' they can prevent a great deal of the conflict that often gets in the way of 'high performance'. More important, they can design and operationalize what high performance is for the particular organization, and how to sustain it."

The same is true of agreements. Levine says most people never think about investing the time to make explicit the implicit agreement they believe they have at the beginning of a new personal or professional relationship, team or project. They are off and running, each pursuing his or her own vision of the destination and how to get there, often without the clarity necessary to minimize the potential for conflict.

Making agreements explicit therefore encourages not only collaboration and productivity but job satisfaction. Collaborative action creates productivity and builds satisfying professional and personal relationships. "So you need good agreements on the front end, and you should follow the 10 essential elements of agreements that I have put together," he says.

Levine's 10 "essential elements" comprise a template of elementary items that must be discussed in order to create that vision and a map (the list appears on page 89).

"The agreement should answer the questions: What is our intent and vision? What are we doing together, and what's it going to look like down the road apiece? And it builds trust when those things are put in writing.

"I believe the trust comes as a result of having a full and complete discussion about what you're doing together and whether or not you have a good agreement, a covenantal agreement, a meeting of minds and hearts. That is another way of asking do you trust moving forward with this person or these people. Having everything explicit makes a big difference to that, because otherwise people are a little wary. There is a little bit of fear. There's a level of uncertainty."

Nevertheless, however high the quality of the agreement, conflict and differences will surface, Levine warns, because human nature dictates that conflicts, differences and the aforementioned internal "chatter" pervade organizational relationships. The ability to prevent destructive conflict (dissonance that gets in the way of productivity) and always move towards resolution and agreement is a critical competence for building a high-performance culture. Resolution and a new agreement that articulates the resolution increase productivity and return everyone to optimal levels of output and satisfaction.

"Resolution restores the ability and desire to take action, coordinate action and see the productive benefits of our collaborative actions. Resolution enables effective collaboration by allowing everyone to quickly move through the conflict and get back to productive activity," Levine says.

"Getting to resolution can be as simple as letting go of the conflict without the need to process it at length, and crafting a new agreement. In fact, in my experience, the compelling characteristic of high performing teams is the competence to quickly move through conflicts that come up. Be it wisdom, maturity or focus, high performance comes from getting out of one's own way and doing the work," he says.

Levine says following the "conversational template" will foster real partnerships with colleagues, bosses, support staff, suppliers, joint venture partners, clients and collaborators. The key is articulating joint vision, and specifying the actions needed to produce desired outcomes, standards to evaluate your results and who you need to reach your objectives. Crafting "agreements for results" is a simple way of creating a culture containing a high degree of trust because it is empowering, inclusive and highly participatory.

They will help insulate you from the occasional conflicts and relationship breakdowns that might still surface.

"No matter how good the agreement is, stuff will come up that you didn't consider, circumstances will change, people's interpretations of words will differ," he says. "The real key piece is not just to build agreement on the front end but it is to build a relationship, because once you have a relationship, then you have a much better ability to work through the differences and conflicts that come up."