Building Trust Through Conversation: NHS Horizons team

mlcsuhorizons
Mar 19, 2025
2 min read

Updated: Mar 6

Connecting Conversations surfaced deep-rooted issues, leading to a shift in how the team approached their work and each other.

The situation

In mid-2025, the Horizons team faced a familiar challenge: how to strengthen connection, trust, and psychological safety in a fast-paced, purpose-driven work environment.

Inspired by the Modern Productive Series, the team saw an opportunity to test the Connecting Conversation approach at one of their monthly in-person team days.

The solution

A Connecting Conversation uses guided prompts on conversation cards to spark meaningful dialogue. At the start of the day, members of the Horizons team each selected a card that resonated with them, paired up, and spent 30 minutes in quiet conversation. The aim wasn’t to solve problems, but to share, listen, and reflect. Afterwards,participants contributed a reflection, insight, or question via a Menti poll.

A month later, the team built on this approach by repeating the exercise, adding a follow-on group conversation and introducing a poll to measure psychological safety. This iteration deepened the impact, enabling collective reflection,surfacing shared challenges and aspirations, and generating actionable ideas to take forward as a team.

Immediate impact

The paired Connecting Conversations at the start of the day had an immediate effect. Reflections shared via Menti revealed a strong emotional undercurrent within the team,prompting a spontaneous shift in the day’s agenda. Instead of following the original plan, the team spent the day exploring what truly mattered to them, leading to new commitments and a collective openness to experiment with fresh ways of working. Individuals expressed gratitude for open dialogue spaces, feeling closer to the team and valuing the opportunity to speak freely. Psychological safety increased immediately after the Connecting Conversation, boosting team confidence in discussing difficult topics.

Wider impacts

One unexpected but powerful outcome was a noticeable uplift in team wellbeing. As people felt genuinely heard and supported, this was reflected in our weekly wellbeing survey (used as a regular‘temperature check’) which showed improvements in the weeks that followed.

Trust deepened, even when conversations were difficult.

Team dynamics shifted, with more openness, empathy,and collective ownership of challenges.

What next?

Horizons plans to continue using Connecting Conversations, exploring virtual formats and integrating them into regular team rhythms.

“I truly valued our team day in person this week. It provided me a space to share, listen and remain hopeful for our future. I cant wait to have more and keep our conversations open.”

What 3 pieces of advice would you give others?

Measure the difference

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End with actions

Ending the conversation by agreeing some actionable next steps is an important way to demonstrate commitment and follow-through, further building trust within the team.

Find ways to make it a habit

The Connecting Conversation is not a standalone, one-off activity. Rather, it’s a practical and simple way to bring deeper, human conversations into the day to day working of a busy and pressured team.