You’re a leader in Information Architecture. How can you build trust with your team?

As a leader communication is key. Listen twice as much as you talk. As an example have each and every one of your team members tell you what motivates them to go to work, let them tell you what their Goal is. With the information given from them you will be able to lead each and everyone of your team members the way that makes them feel seen, heard and valued. Because not everyone is motivated by for example, money or a higher position.

The best way to build trust with your team is to let them borrow your Lambo for the weekend. I mean if you're willing to let them muck around with a car that costs several times their annual salary, that's trust, right? Also it's a really good idea to not send salacious emails to that hot new intern in your department. Getting busted for that really wrecks trust. Get an escort instead.

As a leader, not just in the field of information architecture, you have a responsibility to communicate clearly with all members of your team. Clear communication with team members will create trust in long-term planning goals and create a sense of job security for team members.

Key to earning the team's trust is making clear that you have their interests at heart. The single best way to do that is to listen.

É necessário que todos os colaboradores estejam engajados em busca de alcanças as metas do cliente. Para isso, as métricas precisam ser claras e objetivas, assim, toda a equipe poderá estar engajada na busca dos melhores resultados para o cliente e consequentemente para os usuários.

Communication is key in terms of building trust in the team. In fact a senior of mine had spoken about over communication. As well, and when in doubt "over-communicate" is what he had said, which stood me in good stead during a crisis. The effectiveness of communication is in, how well the listener is able to make sense of it, not in how well or how grand the person communicating does the job. It's important for leaders to understand this aspect. Communication is the first and most important tool in building trust with the team, and in today's day and age, communication is super easy, all pervasive and can be personalised too.

It is critical when presenting a project that you are showing your work by presenting the data analysis, best practice citations, and data sources that go into your work in addition to damn good design.

Give them autonomy. Give them voice. Talk less, listen more. Ask them questions. Do not make promises you cannot keep. Always tell them the context of tasks. Praise publicly, criticise in private. Do not hide behind emails or tasks in task tracker - talk to them. Remember Pareto principle - 20% of effort give 80% of result. Find that 20%.

1. Surround yourself with a good team. 2. Be an active listener - don't dominate. 3. Solicit feedback from ALL stakeholders. 4. (Respectfully) challenge the status quo. 5. Highlight alternatives. 6. Outline alternative opinions. 7. Be bold and assertive when presenting the group decision, and give credit where credit is due. 8. Be solid on your execution, to build your resume for future trust.

Communicating clearing involves understanding how your message is received by your audiences, focusing on the content that applies to them, and leaving them with a clear sense of what was the purpose of this communication, how does it impact me, what is the next step.

It is true that misunderstandings accounts for almost 70% of the cases of mistrust. And unspoken assumptions are the mother of many such misunderstandings. Usually within a team or a profession people are conditioned to have the same assumptions by training, by discipline, through experience... but across teams or for interdisciplinary teams, like info architecture where people across disciplines blend, you tend to have the 'tower of babele' phenomenon, where everyone assumes the others share the same assumptions and see things the same way or value things the same way but they don't. Over time repetitive conflicts of opinion and conflict of professional, departmental or role interests become interpersonal and insurmountable.

I find that literally using the phrase, “I trust you, because we hired you for your unique skills” is not only incredibly empowering but also builds employee confidence and brings out the best for clients. Empowered employees empower the organization. If you can’t trust the team you have it’s a fault in your leadership not theirs. Allowing protected and calculated risk taking not only accelerates your projects, strengthens your team, but also grows your company.

Todo profissional de AI/UX deve ser capacidade para definir as métricas e metas do projeto. Sem isso como norte, o projeto corre risco de não alcançar o sucesso. É necessário que o profissional realize pesquisas, entrevistas, e tenha o conhecimento claro e compartilhado junto ao cliente dos números que se busca alcançar na execução da arquitetura de informação do projeto. Somente com base nisso, a equipe poderá tomar decisões assertivas. Portando, é importantíssimo que a equipe tenha a capacidade (e às vezes coragem) de poder negociar e direcionar o cliente junto aos objetivos numéricos do projeto.

To empower your team to make decisions, start by fostering a culture of trust and transparency. Encourage open communication and ensure everyone understands their role and responsibilities. Provide guidance and support, but also give them the autonomy to make decisions within their areas of expertise. Offer opportunities for skill development and recognize their contributions. Create a safe environment where team members feel confident sharing ideas and taking calculated risks. Celebrate successes and learn from failures together.

Celebrate and acknowledge accomplishments, and be open and honest in your handling of problems. Show that you are dedicated to their well-being and professional development. Building trust with them by respecting their opinions, helping them grow, and being open and honest with them helps the information architecture team work together in a constructive atmosphere.

Consider reframing this question for not only design teams, but for your cross-functional team. Then ask; how can design thinking and human-centered principles help my cross-functional team to explore, learn, and make more informed decisions? Traditionally, design teams have the least amount of organizational decision-making power. Unless you've landed in a truly progressive business, you're better served by exposing design as an influential practice that reduces risk and drives better business decisions.

Hm... You trust someone when they are competent, their heart is in the right place and they are consistent. Now you can't build competence without training and an opportunity for trial and error. So effectively you need to give them the chance to make mistakes in order to grow. To do so and protect the company, you need safety nets so they can learn without taking a tumble turn. Also, they don't need your judgement nor protection, they need your feedback. Don't be paternalistic, be the pro cool dude who has been there and done that. Also, celebrate them when their way is better than yours, I mean come on... they are the next generation. Expect them to surpass you... fast!

Empowerment is one of the most important qualities that a leader can embrace. It is not just about giving the ability to choose to other team members, it is about demonstrating Trust in their decisions and acknowledging they may be different than your own. Yet most successful team members will constantly reference great managers and empowerment in the same breath. The sense of ownership that comes with empowerment also ensures a high degree of personal vested interest in the outcomes. We see obligation give way to enthusiasm, helping ensure positive outcomes are achieved.

Empowering teams to make informed decisions involves establishing a well-defined and articulated process, ensuring clarity and transparency at each stage. For instance, during a software development project, I facilitated decision-making by outlining clear criteria and methodologies for evaluating alternatives. This process involved thorough research and analysis, leading to a comprehensive roadmap documenting the chosen solution, alternatives considered, and rationale behind the decision. By effectively communicating this roadmap to stakeholders, everyone was kept informed and engaged, fostering trust and alignment throughout the project lifecycle.

First, trust your team to iterate at early project stages with visibility but autonomy. Yes-and ideas, encourage synthesis. Second, filter concepts through project goals, production constraints, and context boundaries. Keep the team aware and informed, encourage feedback, keep pushback fair.

Das Team soll mit Schulungen und mit gleichstellung der Verantwortlichkeitsbereiche dazu gebracht werden, im Austausch Ihre Entscheidungen selbständig treffen zu können.

Run collaborative workshops. Gather people to develop holistic understanding, based on which create proposals for information architecture. Evaluate proposals with tree tests and prototypes to further refine the solutions.

Start by fostering a collaborative environment where everyone feels valued and encouraged to share their ideas. Be transparent about project goals and timelines, and seek input from team members at every stage. Encourage open communication and feedback, and actively involve team members in decision-making processes. Provide opportunities for skill development and mentorship to empower your team to contribute effectively to the IA process.

This bears repeating: "IA" or "Information Architecture" is language that's reserved for an ever-narrowing audience. Flip your mental model to Experience Architecture, which encompasses much more and emphasizes the humans that you're trying to serve, and their experiential needs. Teach your cross-functional leaders the values, language and practice of human-centered design. Show them how it makes their jobs better and easier and less risky. Design together, cross-functionally.

Involvement is indeed a key component of trust within any team, especially in the context IA. As an IA leader, it's essential to ensure that your team members are not just bystanders but active participants in the IA process. This sense of involvement helps to cultivate a culture of ownership and responsibility, which in turn leads to more engaged and committed team members.

Incorporating the team in defining the target vision of the Information Architecture roadmap not only ensures their understanding but also fosters ownership and commitment. For example, in a recent project, I facilitated workshops where team members from various departments collaborated to define the future vision of our digital platform's Information Architecture. By involving them in discussions, they gained a deeper understanding of the objectives and challenges, enabling them to contribute valuable insights. This collaborative approach not only resulted in a more comprehensive roadmap but also instilled a sense of ownership and commitment among team members, leading to greater enthusiasm and alignment with the project's goals.

To ensure your team is fully involved in the IA process, actively solicit their input, feedback, and suggestions at every stage—from research and analysis to design and testing. Acknowledge each contribution, recognize achievements, and reward efforts to show they are valued. This practice not only enhances the IA process through diverse perspectives but also fosters a culture of collaboration, engagement, and satisfaction. By making involvement a cornerstone of your approach, you create an environment where every team member feels an integral part of the journey, driving innovation and collective success.

In the past when designing solutions I used to ask random people that passed by the office to come in to show them the solution, asked them if they find easy and useful as a final user and take notes of their comments. The team could hear if their proposed solutions are usable for customers, if not rethink solutions and improvements.

To build trust and engagement, involve your team in decision-making and acknowledge their contributions. Foster open communication by encouraging diverse perspectives and constructive feedback. Create a culture of transparency by sharing project updates and addressing concerns promptly. Encourage innovation by providing opportunities for skill development and recognizing creative solutions.

Manter a equipe única é papel fundamental do líder. Trabalhar com IA a colaboração é essencial. Principalmente com times multidisciplinar, onde atuam designers e desenvolvedores por exemplo.

Collaboration is essential in information architecture. Involving your team in the IA process not only harnesses diverse perspectives but also shows that their input is valued. When team members feel included in decision-making processes, they are more likely to trust the outcomes and the leadership guiding the project.

Todo líder deve sempre promover o continuo aprendizado de sua equipe. Novas técnicas surgem, novos devices, novas formas de navegar, e até mesmo o comportamento de gerações muda. É necessário que todos os profissionais de design/ux, independente da geração, tenham conhecimento dos padrões da sociedade atual, “fora da bolha” em que vivem. Por isso, é importante garantir acesso e participação à pesquisas, à atualização profissional de conhecimento e ferramentas, e trocas entre profissionais da área.

Principalmente no digital temos uma necessidade grande de nos manter atualizados. Sabendo disso, também entendo como papel do líder ajudar o time a se desenvolver. Podendo ser feitos investimentos em cursos, treinamentos on-line ou incompany.

A good IA leader actively seeks out opportunities for training, workshops, and conferences focused on IA, ensuring their team stays on top of the latest tools, techniques, and industry trends. They facilitate knowledge-sharing sessions within the team, encouraging members to exchange insights and learn from each other's experiences. They also invest time in one-on-one mentoring and coaching sessions, providing personalized guidance to help team members overcome challenges and achieve their career goals in the field.

Provide clear expectations and opportunities for growth. Encourage ongoing learning and skill development through training programs, mentorship, and access to resources. Offer regular feedback and constructive guidance to help team members identify areas for improvement and achieve their career goals. Foster a culture of collaboration and knowledge sharing, where team members can learn from each other's expertise and experiences.

Mentoring and inspiring the team towards continuous development and learning is essential for keeping them up-to-date with modern concepts in the information architecture field. For instance, in my previous role, I organized regular knowledge-sharing sessions where team members could explore emerging trends and best practices in information architecture. Additionally, I encouraged participation in relevant workshops, webinars, and conferences to broaden their expertise. By fostering a culture of continuous learning, team members remained abreast of the latest developments, enhancing their skills and ensuring our approach to information architecture remained innovative and effective.

Understand both what your team members want in their progress within your team, and beyond. The best (and most rare) companies value the quality of the person over the instance of their contribution. Real people grow over time, as do their interests. Support this, and help them move forward.

When you have constraints with the training budget, you can ask team members to give a little course about a subject once a week, so everybody is on the same knowledge level. Team members have different experience so you can find topics that are of interest for the rest of the team. Promote also to share everyone the knowledge about how somebody solved an assignment.

People often leave a company when they feel they have nowhere to go from where they are. When they don't have both a clear vision of what could be next for them and how to get there they feel stagnant and like they need to go somewhere else for their next step. Help them find what their next steps are at your company and give them a clear understanding of what it takes to get there. Make sure they have the mentoring and opportunities they need, if not from you then from someone else qualified.

Investing in your team's growth demonstrates your commitment to their success. Providing opportunities for training, skill development, and career advancement not only enhances their capabilities but also builds trust by showing that you have their best interests at heart.

As a leader of people and practice it is important to look at opportunities for testing methodologies and scaling these to support both business objectives and customer outcomes. It's wonderful to isolate opportunities for team and individual training that enable team members to engage with training they desire but also provide opportunities to practice this training in real world settings and scenarios. Information architecture is a specialist area with established practices, research and testing approaches. What is wonderful is the opportunity to see this area, information architecture, that is established be combined with design thinking and systems thinking approaches to enable better outcomes in multidisciplinary engagement settings.

Trust is earned over time. As a former CEO of mine once said, no one cares what you know until they know that you care. Lead with genuine empathy and everything else will fall into place.

Lead by example! Demonstrate unwavering commitment by being actively engaged in your work and fulfilling deadlines and responsibilities consistently. Moreover, foster a culture of collaboration by encouraging teamwork and acknowledging both individual and collective contributions.

No!!! Don't model behaviour. There are many ways to get things done. Your way or a way is not necessarily the one. Things change (rapidly) and what worked yesterday, won't necessarily work tomorrow. So allow people to find their way of doing things as long as ... they are considerate... teach them what to look out for when they make strategic and operational decisions, teach them what is the minimum requirements to achieve at each stage of a process but don't teach them how to do it. You create a pleasing entourage, not a creative, thoughtful and powerful tribe.

Modeling good behavior is only half of the equation. Great leaders demonstrate through example, allowing others to learn from their actions. At the same time, they are equally receptive and observant to those for whom they are modeling, ensuring opportunities to learn are not passed up. The ability to learn from one of your team members, and openly acknowledging it demonstrates humility, while still fostering a leadership style that helps promote equality, empowerment, and growth opportunities for even the most seasoned, or most Junior of team members.

You don't have to model how to do things exactly, you hire smart people to show you how to do things. But you have to model the character you expect from everyone. Integrity, passion, openness to opinions, encouraging initiative. Be the culture that you expect from others, and be willing to discourage negative behavior in regular times of feedback.

Penso que além dessa modelagem, existe todo um trabalho de Inspiração. O líder tem papel fundamental em trabalhar para ajudar o time a chegar nos melhores resultados. O time tem que ser segurança de que seu líder está ali para ajudar nas tomadas de decisões. Muitos irão se espelhar nos líderes, então pensa sempre em formas de deixar claro que você está junto do time.

Modelling behaviour is about leading by example. This isn't about showing people exactly how operational tasks should be carried out, but displaying your values as a leader. When people are aware of the culture of the team, they are better to able to assess which behaviour isn't acceptable.

To model the behavior you expect from your team, lead with transparency, consistency, and empathy. Be open about goals and challenges, stay true to your word, and show understanding towards team members. Hold everyone accountable, treat them with respect, and demonstrate competence in your field and passion for IA. Foster collaboration, give feedback regularly, and offer support when needed.

As a leader, your goal must be to completely enable the team to act well without a leader. Empower your team to make decisions and stand behind them. Implement an open and positive error culture! Shit happens, but a good team can solve everything!

As a leader is important to make you´re team feel you're deep involve in the project by knowing them better, understanding where are they with their tasks, if they have problems hear them and try to find suitable solutions, make milestones and problems a team effort where everybody wants to help with solutions. Be open, respectful so all members can feel they can talk to you any time and under any circunstances.

Todo projeto de arquitetura de informação/experiência do usuário é continuo. Deve-se acompanhar as métricas após a entrega, para garantir as metas do projeto. Ajustes de design, em busca da meta, são constantes e normais. Se a construção das telas e do projeto foram realizadas com o objetivo do projeto claro em mente, certamente os ajustes de rota não serão de grande impacto, ainda mais caso as telas tenham sido validadas por dados antes de irem ao desenvolvimento.

The top 5 sections are true for building trust as a leader of a team, and I agree with all 5. I’d like to emphasize key aspects of leadership in the field of Interaction Architecture (IA). As you gather experience in this field, you realize that IA is as much a science as it is subjective. I would encourage my team to invest in knowing the brand and understanding the customer or user - their motivation, patience, and user-journey. These insights will drive an appropriate interaction architecture and consequently earn leadership’s trust. As a leader, I would promote strong connections with research groups and marketing to work collectively on this in order to design a successful product

Beyond these points, it's essential to foster a culture of respect, empathy, and appreciation within the team. Recognizing and acknowledging the contributions of team members, providing support during challenging times, and being receptive to feedback all contribute to building trust and strengthening the bonds within the team.

Listen to your team members. Do your utmost to understand what they communicate in words and behaviour. Keep asking questions for clarity. When you say something ... follow through.

In a start-up, ensure the design team has equity and proper pay; many people skip that and put it all into engineering. I don't recommend it. That is a trust killer. Everyone who is working consistently should, in a startup environment, have the right to earn shares or refuse them if they want. It creates a higher investment in the outcome. If they are helping build your product, brand, and experience (the thing you're profiting from and selling), they deserve equal opportunity in shares.

To build trust with your team you need to lead with empathy and honesty. Get to know your team members. Find out what works best with them -- or rather how they work best, and facilitate that. It could be that they prefer a more hands on approach from leadership, so you should give them more guidance and direction (without veering into micromanagement territory). Or they may work best when left alone, in which case you should minimize distractions and let them focus on their work. Every person is different, and if you treat them as individuals, provide a work environment that is catered to their needs, and communicate openly and honestly, you will earn their trust.

Drawing from my own experience, I've always excelled when: - I've been trusted to do the work I was hired to do - I was encouraged to learn, grow and become a better version of myself - I was helped to learn & grow - My work was acknowledged - I got to see the fruits of my labor

Trust comes from transparency, authenticity, and delivery of truth. Say what you can, and mean what you say. Leaders will inevitably have access to more information than they can distribute. But you don't build trust through deflection or double-speak. We are all people working with people. Our responsibilities vary, but our worth does not. Be fair, be kind.

Being a leader isn't just about holding a position; it's about having the knowledge and experience to guide others effectively. Mastery in the field is a powerful tool that allows leaders to build trust, solve problems, inspire their teams, and ultimately achieve success.

No olvidar que somos humanos, y tratar al equipo como personas, entender e involucrarse desde el lado humano de y para nuestros colaboradores, es esencial para la armonía y motivación de los equipos.