Question

b) The outbreak of the Novel Corona Virus Disease (COVID-19) in Ghana and other parts of the globe is a unique situation and experience which could leave lasting impressions in the minds of people.

You are required to:

i) Hypothesize the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on your personality traits after the outbreak of the disease in Ghana.                                                                                                                                                                           

C) Illustrate with practical examples how the competence of team members could engender trust within the organization.

Answer 1

We are now living with a pandemic caused by a coronavirus that spreads the COVID-19. Containment measures have been recommended, including social distancing and handwashing. However, several factors can increase or decrease people’s engagement with these measures. We aimed to investigate to what extent two personality traits, extroversion and conscientiousness, are associated with engagement with two containment measures (social distancing and handwashing). To achieve this we collected data from a Brazilian sample. The findings corroborate our hypothesis, indicating that extroverted functioning seems to lack engagement with the COVID-19 containment measures. At the same time, a conscientiousness pattern is more cautious in following all the recommendations. Although preliminary, these findings add empirical data to the critical debate on individual behavioral responsibility in co-operating with containment measures to prevent even worse outcomes from this pandemic.

The lower scores for extroversion observed in the social distancing group, indicate the challenging task of reducing the social proximity typical of extroverted people, which seemed not to greatly impact their readiness to engage with hand hygiene recommendations. The difficulty in reducing social proximity is coherent with the typical characteristics of extroversion. Moreover, the factors evaluating maladaptive variations of extroversion, Need for attention and (negatively) Intimacy avoidance, highlighted the trend of extroverted people to avoid social distancing. These results suggest that pathological levels may bring even more difficulty with engagement with pandemic containment measures.

In a manner that differs from what was observed for the extroversion trait, low conscientiousness scores were presented by people reporting that they did not engage with any of the containment measures. We can hypothesize that an increase in conscientiousness scores is associated with a decrease in the propensity to break safety recommendations for containment of the pandemic. Moreover, engaging with social distancing does not seems to be a problem for people who score high for this trait. These trends are consistent with the conceptualization of the conscientiousness trait. The Concern with details and Thoroughness factors corroborated this trend, even though they relate to maladaptive variations of conscientiousness.

Our results comprise initial evidence on the association between personality traits and engagement with measures for containment of the COVID-19 pandemic. People who score high for extroversion are probably experiencing more difficulty in following the global recommendations to slow down the spread of the COVID-19, especially the social distancing containment measures. In contrast, people who score high for conscientiousness are more likely to find it easy to adhere to the proposed containment measures. The impact of these different experiences in mental health is yet to be known. However, our findings indicate the importance of acknowledging extroversion and conscientiousness traits as relevant to people’s engagement with the recommended actions. They are an alert to the need for strategies that promote adherence to containment measures by people high in extroversion, since their difficulty in maintaining social distance can put them at a higher risk of contamination and of acting as transmission vectors. Our results provide data for psychological assessment and intervention during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The methodological limitations of our study must be acknowledged. First, this is a cross-sectional study with a restricted convenience sample, and potential uncontrolled confounding variables, which introduce biases to the findings. Second, we only administered self-report scales and did not employ a multimethod approach. Third, we focused on two containment measures and not on all possible measures recommended in the present pandemic situation.

We hope our findings can contribute to dealing with this grueling time for humanity. Many efforts to minimize the damage of the COVID-19 pandemic are underway. We can only agree with the closing words of Wang et al.: “Every effort should be given to understand and control the disease, and the time to act is now.”

b.

As a leader, what can you do to create a culture of trust within your team?

1. Lead by Example

If you want to build trust within your team, then lead by example , and show your people that you trust others. This means trusting your team, your colleagues, and your boss. Never forget that your team members are always watching and taking cues from you – take the opportunity to show them what trust in others really looks like.

If you manage a virtual team , aim to treat your team members just as you would if you were working face to face. This means making every effort to be on time for conference calls or video chats, and letting your remote team members know when you'll be absent, or on vacation.

It's important to follow through on the promises you make, and to set an example for everyone else. Keeping your promises is incredibly important in a virtual team, because your word is often all you can give. Positive follow-through builds trust quickly, and can raise the entire group's tone and expectations.

2. Communicate Openly

Open communication is essential for building trust. You need to get everyone on your team talking to one another in an honest, meaningful way, and you can use several strategies to accomplish this.

First, create a team charter  to define the purpose of the team, as well as each person's role. Present this charter at the first team meeting, and encourage each team member to ask questions, and discuss his or her expectations.

Next, consider organizing team building exercises . When chosen carefully and planned well, these exercises can help "break the ice" and encourage people to open up and start communicating.

Meet regularly, so that all team members have a chance to talk about their progress, and discuss any problems that they're experiencing. This is an important part of getting to know each other. It also creates opportunities for team members to talk, and to help one another solve problems.

3. Know Each Other Personally

One way to build trust is to encourage your team members to see their colleagues as people. Think about creating situations that help them to share personal stories, and to bond.

Do this by asking sensitively about their family, or about their hobbies. Start by sharing some personal information about yourself, and then ask someone else about a hobby, or a musical interest.

Another way to get the team acquainted, and to form stronger bonds, is to socialize after work  or at lunch.

For example, you could set aside time each week for informal group discussions. Consider asking team members to put forward suggestions on topics you could all cover. To start with, you could start a discussion around values . Share some of your own values, and encourage others to share theirs. Values are important to most people, and starting a conversation that allows people to share them highlights your team's humanity.

If your team works remotely, schedule an online "meet and greet" if it's a new team, to help everyone get to know one another as individuals. Ask everyone to write a paragraph or two in their online profiles about their expertise and skills, their personal history, and their interests, and use chat or instant-messaging applications to keep the channels of communication open. You can learn more about this in our article, Five Ways to Build Rapport Online .

4. Don't Place Blame

When people work together, honest mistakes and disappointments happen, and it's easy to blame someone who causes these. However, when everyone starts pointing fingers, an unpleasant atmosphere can quickly develop. This lowers morale, undermines trust, and is ultimately unproductive.

Instead, encourage everyone in your group to think about the mistake in a constructive way. What can you all do to fix what happened, and move forward together? And how can you make sure that this mistake doesn't happen again?

5. Discourage Cliques

Sometimes, cliques can form within a team, often between team members who share common interests or work tasks. However, these groups can – even inadvertently – make others feel isolated. They can also undermine trust between group members.

Start an open discussion about this with your team members, and see what they think about cliques and their effect on other group members. Only by addressing the issue openly can you discourage this damaging behavior.

6. Discuss Trust Issues

If you manage an established team that has trust issues, it's essential to find out how these problems originate, so that you can come up with a strategy for overcoming them.

Consider giving team members a questionnaire to fill out anonymously. Ask them about the level of trust within the group, as well as why they think there's a lack of trust. Once you've read the results, get everyone together to talk about these issues (but make sure that you respect the anonymity of the survey!)