Earn Trust with a Virtual Workforce

“Trust. Clarity. Vision. Focus on these to make your virtual team more effective.”
~George Bradt

by Jim Solomon and Bruce LaRue, Ph.D.

Earn Trust

How do leaders of a remote workforce earn trust and develop team engagement without being physically present? This is a question that so many have struggled with during the COVID-19 pandemic and continue to struggle with as decisions are made to keep employees remote, move to a hybrid schedule, or return to total onsite work.

Trust is the cornerstone of leadership – it’s what makes leaders and their organizations successful or is the reason for their failure. Stacey Hanke shares that “according to a recent PwC survey of more than 1,400 CEOs worldwide, the majority of respondents believe a lack of trust is a serious threat to the success of their teams and their business.”

Leaders across all sectors are reporting that they struggle to earn trust from their team and often find it difficult to have complete trust in their teammates. Working remotely, with few if any face-to-face interactions, finds leaders and their teams challenged with developing genuine relationships. As a leader in this environment, you may find it tough to truly know each teammate, spot developing problems, get feedback, or encourage your team to work together and cross functionally. Your team may feel isolated, unsupported, and without direction. You may find that your team’s productivity is dwindling.

Begin With What & Why

Trust begins with your team having direction, and this must come from you, as the leader. You must provide and reinforce this azimuth regularly by sharing and reinforcing your organization’s purpose – it’s WHAT and Why. Don’t assume that everyone knows this – remind your team of your WHAT along with a compelling rationale for the WHY. Staying on azimuth will add to your credibility, consistency, and communications – key elements of your team’s foundation of trust.

In addition, according to leadership expert and retired Army Command Sergeant Major Donna Brock, especially when the team is working remotely, your employees want and need to know from you:

• Can I trust you?
• Are You Committed to Excellence?
• Do You Care About Me?
• MMFI (Make Me Feel Important)

Trust must be earned daily through a leader’s demonstrated integrity, empathy, character, communication, consistency, and competence. Be devoted to these practices throughout your leadership journey, whether your team is remote or on-site, to gain and retain trust.

Lead with Integrity

A surefire way for a leader to lose trust is through the lack of integrity. Your team knows what is right and wrong and they expect their leaders to set the moral compass heading. To put this into visible action, follow this simple lesson from Marcus Aurelius, “If it is not right, do not do it; if it is not true, do not say it.”

Lead with Empathy

Empathy is about understanding people. Learn to see through the lens of others to best understand their perspective. Let your team know the true you; share about yourself. Take time to learn about each team member, take time to listen, show kindness and compassion. Sincerity is visible even when separated by distance.

Lead with Character

To look at one’s character is to see who they truly are from their ethical and resilient perspective. When addressing trust, expert Lolly Daskal talks often about the importance of our character. “The character within each of us defines our leadership:

• When we lead with character, we embody courage and bravery.
• When we lead with character, we boldly face difficulties.
• When we lead with character, we persevere regardless of the circumstances.

Character is the one thing that will stay the same in the ever-constant change of our leadership.”

Lead with Communication

Communications must be “clear and specific” says Kim Scott, author of Radical Candor. Effective communications must be clear, concise, and consistent. With a remote workforce, communications must include your voice, not just digital messaging. Your employees need to hear from you and want to know about you – and not just work-talk.

Lead with Consistency

“Consistency is a key element, without which a leader is incapable of getting respect, success or even developing confidence in others”, according to Daniel Transon. Being consistent does not mean that they continue to do the same things again and again or fail to seek change to move forward. Rather as a leader, they must be consistent in their approach, they shouldn’t send conflicting or confusing messages through their actions or decisions. Predictable environments are proven to allow employees to perform at their best, eliminating stress from uncertainty.

Lead With Competence

Andy Stanley explains that “The moment a leader steps away from their core competencies, their effectiveness as a leader diminishes.” As important as one’s character is as a leader, they also must be thought to be competent. Leaders don’t have to be the smartest person in the room but should possess the critical elements of knowledge to be the leader of the organization.

Earning a Virtual Team’s Trust

Her Competence – Jackie was a highly successful human resources leader with 18 years in the business. She had just been selected by the CEO from a pool of candidates to run her company’s demanding western regional health services recruiting team.

Her region covered 11 western states and her office was co-located with one of her four subordinate satellite offices in Denver. While each of her managers were highly motivated, most of them lacked experience in the health services recruiting field. Three of the managers had been in place for about 12-18 months, while one was entirely new to the job.

Her Character – Jackie was convinced that the same values that earned her a sterling reputation in her previous position, like mutual trust and respect, open communication, holding people accountable, giving praise and recognizing a job well done, would continue to guide her forward. She basically needed new ways to engage with her team—and get them to engage with one another—in a virtual environment.

She learned that her predecessor had been only partially successful in meeting her personnel recruitment targets. The performance of each office varied widely, indicating that they were not sharing best practices amongst themselves. Each manager was so focused on meeting their individual goals that they rarely took the time to reach out to engage with one another. Although the regional headquarters had staff and resources available to support them, the satellite offices rarely sought their assistance because they felt that it was more trouble than it was worth—a bureaucratic paper drill that just wasted their time.

Jackie realized that she had to first help her team learn to see her region more as an integrated whole rather than a collection of regional offices. As she put it, “We have to get them to see themselves as one team paddling in the same direction.” This became Jackie’s primary goal as leader of the organization – to get her team to self-organize behind her intent, to accomplish their mission, ultimately achieving her goal.

Her Communication – Jackie’s solution to promote more cross-functional dialogue was to implement what she described as the 10-minute virtual stand-up call. She would earn her team’s trust by getting them to begin to trust one another. She told her managers that she would conduct these meetings twice monthly by phone to gain input on specific issues from them. The focus of the first call was to identify the region’s top strengths and challenges.
Her Integrity – Although one of her managers (co-located with her at the regional office) offered to conduct the call from his office, she politely declined. Though it would have been more convenient, she did not want to appear to be giving him preferential treatment. Several team members told her later that they appreciated this gesture as a means of keeping everyone on a level playing field during the meetings.

Her Consistency – When it was time for the first call, exactly on schedule, Jackie dialed in. She quickly reinforced the meeting rules: calls begin and end on schedule; one speaker at a time; be prepared and concise since time is limited; and no one is permitted to say that they merely agree with the person before them. After each manager stated their perception of the strengths and challenges facing the region, Jackie simply said “thank you”, intentionally avoiding a lengthy discussion on the topic. Because their perceptions of their strengths and challenges as a region varied dramatically, it confirmed her initial suspicion that they were not engaging with one another as a team.

At the end of the ten minutes, she thanked everyone for their input and told them that the topic for the next call was to provide the names of the three most important stakeholders for the region and why. They typically focused their recruiting efforts on universities, hospitals, and clinics, and she was curious if her managers had identified any unique resources in their respective area of operation.

The second session went much like the first. Once again, she could tell that the managers were merely reacting to her request and providing their personal thoughts without engaging with one another first. During a meeting with her San Diego manager, Jackie asked her how often she spoke with the other three managers. “Almost never, we are too busy for that,” she said. Then Jackie asked if she sought help from anyone on her own team in providing responses to the 10-minute stand-up meetings. Seeming a bit surprised and almost a bit offended at the question, her manager responded, “No one gave me input, those are my ideas. I know what’s going on in my office.”

Her Empathy – This provided the perfect coaching opportunity. Jackie knew that one of her other managers had already solved a problem that the San Diego branch was now experiencing. She suggested that the two talk and then share what they learn with their peers, the other managers.

Jackie also encouraged the manager to engage with her own team prior to each stand-up call. Not only would the leader obtain new insight, but it would help her team feel valued, strengthen the organization, and make her job as a manager easier, ultimately earning trust from her team. As she frequently felt overwhelmed, this last point really got her attention. This small amount of just enough, just-in-time coaching helped the manager to see her own role as a leader differently. She realized that she did not have to have all the answers and that involving her team would be better for everyone.

Her Earned Trust – At the next 10-minute stand-up call, one manager told Jackie that they might not need ten minutes that day because he was able to provide a collective response. All the managers had worked together prior to the call. This is exactly what Jackie was looking for. The San Diego manager had reached out to the others, and each had discussed the stand-up meeting with their own internal team. The managers then participated in a series of teleconferences to discuss what they had each learned from their teams. Together they came up with a plan for Jackie that was comprehensive and aligned directly with the specific goals that she had laid out for her region.

At that point, Jackie knew her team was finally beginning to paddle in the same direction. They even asked if they could meet quarterly at a different satellite office location to learn from one another and to see their region through the perspectives of their peers.

Over the coming months, the morale and performance of Jackie’s team improved. New ideas and best practices began to emerge from the team’s virtual interactions that strengthened the entire region. Jackie found that learning to lead virtual teams this way had not only made her team more effective, but her own job was becoming easier and more enjoyable.

Her virtual team had moved from compliance to commitment. Each manager had built a greater sense of trust within their team, and Jackie had earned the trust throughout her region – exactly the outcome she had sought from the beginning.

• What are you doing to build a sense of trust and community in your virtual team?
• What are you doing to promote cross-functional communication, coordination, and  integration in your virtual organization?
• How are you ensuring that each member of your virtual team feels included and engaged as a full member of the team?

Adapted from Seeing What Isn’t There – A Leader’s Guide to Creating Change in a Complex World.

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