Trust is critical to successful remote and hybrid work. If you don’t believe that your team is working away when you can’t see them, it can lead to micromanagement, constant meetings, unproductive check-ins and redundancy. Even with the best of intentions, doubt and suspicion can creep in. But why?
When we work in the office with people every day, we get a thousand little cues about how they work, and what they’re working on. Also, IF they’re working, which is often deceptive since we know plenty of people who look busy and achieve nothing. But the sights and sounds of business help put our doubts to bed. Furthermore, we know that if they have questions or get stuck they can always find us to get answers.
But when we don’t see each other in action, there’s a lot of what I call “white space.” If we assume positive intent, that won’t matter for a while. If Mary says she’s working, you believe her because she’s a good person and so are you.
Until something unexpected happens. How many deadlines get missed, or unusual comments get made on meetings, or just creepy feelings in your gut tell you something’s up do you have to experience before you begin to doubt yourself and your team?
In a perfect world, we would accept what people said and always assume the most positive intent. How’s that working for you?
The fact is humans need almost constant confirmation of our positive beliefs in order to maintain them and keep doubt and suspicion at bay. In its most extreme forms, that can take the form of keyboard trackers, activity monitoring, and constant reports. That can in turn erode the employee’s trust of their manager and organization.
The thing that we need is proof. We need enough evidence to support our positive beliefs or correct negative suspicions, otherwise over time we’ll begin to lose trust. Specifically, we need evidence in three areas:
Purpose and Alignment. Trust is only possible if everyone wants to accomplish the same things for the same reasons. If the manager and organization are focused on outputs, and the employee is focused on accomplishing the tasks they are best at or most enjoy, there will eventually be conflict and working at cross purposes. Does everyone on the team know what the goals are and what’s expected of them?
Competence. This is where we often fall into micromanaging tasks and tracking behaviors. Are people doing good work? Are they competent or are they flailing around? Often you don’t know until deadlines are missed or the quality of the work causes problems. Leaders need to make sure people have clear expectations, and there are (relatively noninvasive, unproductive) ways of measuring output that give enough information to be proactive without being onerous.
Motivation. If we are honest, most of us understand what we are supposed to be doing and know how to do it. The problem is that for reasons big and small, good and ridiculous, we just don’t want to. Motivation is hard to quantify objectively, but leaders need to check with their people regularly. Have there been changes in behavior and engagement on meetings? Have people gone radio silent? Are they doing the bare minimum? Use your one on ones to ask real questions about how people feel about their work, their colleagues, and the team. These will be some of your more uncomfortable conversations, but they are important.
If people are aligned and share a purpose, are competent and motivated, it is easy to maintain trust.
How are you (and the members of the team) getting the evidence needed to build and maintain trust on your remote team.
We talk about, and share a simple graphic model for trust, in the updated version of The Long-Distance Leader, Revised Rules for Remarkable Remote and Hybrid Leadership.
