Rosenverse
Practical People Skills for Building Trust on Teams and with Partners

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Practical People Skills for Building Trust on Teams and with Partners

Gold
Thursday, December 9, 2021 • Civic Design 2021
Share the love for this talk
Practical People Skills for Building Trust on Teams and with Partners
Speakers: Melissa Eggleston , Maya Israni , Florence Kasule , Owen Seely and Andrea Schneider
Link:

Summary

Do you think you have great people skills? How do you know? Lots of us are never taught critical behaviors that build trust with others. In the government, trust is often the currency that helps build momentum and gets things done.  In this panel with experienced professionals from the U.S. Digital Service and moderated by Melissa Eggleston, we will discuss what works well in building trust in government. You'll learn from past mistakes of others so you can avoid similar missteps. Get practical direction to improve your people skills with your team and all those partners you need  on your side.

Key Insights

  • The trust equation breaks trust into credibility, reliability, intimacy, and low self-orientation, providing a practical tool for trust-building.

  • Delivering results consistently, summarized as delivery equals trust, is critical to maintain reliability and build trust in government projects.

  • Empathy and kindness are foundational people skills that enable creating safe spaces and fostering participation within complex teams.

  • Honesty, even when delivering difficult truths about a project, sustains trust when done respectfully and backed by evidence.

  • Code-switching and adaptability from diverse personal backgrounds enhance listening skills and relationship-building in government environments.

  • Discovery sprints serve as trust-building exercises by involving partners early and collaboratively in problem understanding and solution ideation.

  • Traditional ‘throwing over the fence’ procurement approaches fail; collaborative procurement teams improve trust and outcomes.

  • Relationship maintenance requires intentional effort, similar to personal friendships, including regular check-ins and leveraging multiple communication channels.

  • Understanding individual circumstances and meeting people where they are increases warmth and connection in professional relationships.

  • Trust-building is layered, requiring care not only between people but also between people and work, and between work entities.

Notable Quotes

"The effect you have on others is the most valuable currency there is."

"Trust is the sum of credibility, reliability, intimacy, divided by self-orientation."

"Kindness and empathy are a good way to build interest and relationships."

"In procurement, throwing things over the fence just doesn’t work; collaboration builds trust."

"Delivery is trust—doing what you said, avoiding overpromising, and delivering quality."

"Listening with all your senses, not just the words they’re saying, reveals people’s true needs."

"When you tell the truth, especially hard truths, how you say it matters as much as the truth itself."

"Meeting people where they are means recognizing what’s going on in their life and their context."

"Building trust is a slow, brick-by-brick process, especially when you’re entering new environments."

"Trust requires care at different levels: person-to-person, person-to-work, and work-to-work."

Ask the Rosenbot
Melissa Tsang
From Insights to Action: Driving Business Values through DesignOps
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
Anna Avrekh
Diversity In and For Design: Building Conscious Diversity in Design and Research
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Liza Pemstein
Scaling Research Via an Ops First Model at Clever
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Patrizia Bertini
The (r)evolution of designOps: It’s Time to Think (really) BIG
2025 • DesignOps Summit 2025
Gold
Alexandra Schmidt
Why Ethics Can't Save Tech
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Edgar Anzaldua Moreno
Using Research to Determine Unique Value Proposition
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Renee Bouwens
Landing Product Impact: Aligning Research as a Foundational Driver for Delivering the World’s Best Products
2023 • QuantQual Interest Group
Ash Brown
Silver Linings: What DesignOps Learned in the Shift to WFH
2020 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
Lukas Moro
“Feels Like Paper!”: Interfacing AI through Paper
2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Gold
Russell Blair
Killing the blank page
2024 • Designing with AI 2024
Gold
Maria Skaaden
Panel Discussion: Methodologies and Work Environments
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Jorge Arango
Meeting of the Waters: Designing for Successful Inorganic Growth
2021 • Enterprise Community
Daniel Korczynski
Why AI Is Bad at Research (and how to make it actually useful)
2026 • Advancing Research 2026
Gold
Nick Cochran
Growing in Enterprise Design through Making Connections
2019 • Enterprise Experience 2019
Gold
Maish Nichani
Sparking a Service Excellence Mindset at a Government Agency
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Sheri Byrne-Haber
Accessibility at Scale
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold

More Videos

Todd Healy

"We’ve found a way to use data to speak the language of business while tying it back into our values as designers to build better products."

Todd Healy Jess Greco

Driving Change with CX Metrics

June 7, 2023

David Cronin

"We’ve put much more effort into workshop facilitation and teaching how to use the space effectively than on the design system itself."

David Cronin Uday Gajendar Peter Morville Kendra Shimmell

Discussion

May 13, 2015

Kevin M. Hoffman

"We need to sequence activities carefully so we innovate while also keeping code shipping without stopping progress."

Kevin M. Hoffman

Theme 2: Enterprise Team Journey

June 3, 2019

Dalia El-Shimy

"If you understand their language—gross merchandising value, monthly recurring revenue, daily active users—you speak their world."

Dalia El-Shimy

So You've Got a Seat at the Table. Now What?

March 31, 2020

Bria Alexander

"If you want your question asked, please put it in the Slack channel, because I cannot keep up with the rapid things happening live."

Bria Alexander Louis Rosenfeld

Opening Remarks Day 1

March 25, 2024

Jon Fukuda

"We’re helping to create those natural conditions in which design and designers thrive by bringing our own sense of sacredness and nobility."

Jon Fukuda

Theme One Intro

September 8, 2022

Clemens Janssen

"People started asking if a pattern we'd seen in one user occurred in others, and that led to formalizing qualitative analysis."

Clemens Janssen Jane Davis

Efficiently Scaling Research as a Team of One

March 28, 2023

Christian Madsbjerg

"Managing up assumes research is below something, but I see advising as partnerships and equals."

Christian Madsbjerg

Influencing Strategy

March 31, 2020

Sam Proulx

"Accessible mobile designs can be reused on desktop, but desktop-first accessibility is harder to transfer to mobile."

Sam Proulx

Mobile Accessibility: Why Moving Accessibility Beyond the Desktop is Critical in a Mobile-first World

September 8, 2022