RWL020 How to Build Trust and Thrive in Remote Teams

Building Trust in Remote Teams

Speaker 1

0:00

Hello, it's Alex at the Remote Work Life Podcast. I hope all is well with you and that you're enjoying the episodes. And for those of you who are new, the Remote Work Life Podcast is a growing community and podcast where tech and digital marketing professionals from around the world with a shared interest in remote work come to learn how to grow a remote career or business from those who know the world of the remote work best. And I'm Alex Wilson-Campbell, and I will share with you interviews from SaaS and product and service CEOs and leaders and entrepreneurs and talk to you about the benefits of remote work. I'm not in my usual office today. I'm trying something a little bit different, so hopefully it's not too noisy, because I'm on a bit of a creaky chair. You can hear probably some sirens in the background. The reason I'm not in my normal studio is because, well, I move around being a remote worker and there's certain times when I get thoughts that I want to share and I just want to get those out as soon as possible before I lose them. And I think that these particular thoughts that I want to share with you are quite important because they've come about from my various conversations with not just remote professionals, but people who run remote businesses, so CEOs, hiring managers and leaders and thought leaders from the world of remote work. I've been interviewing CEOs for the last gosh 10 years or so now, and what I've been doing is over the last year or so anyway is focusing in on remote CEOs and remote professionals and some of the information I've gathered. There's been some recurring themes that I thought would be really important to share with you, and what I've been able to establish from the recurring themes is that there are certain pillars of remote work, certain common themes that crop up quite often, and I think these common themes will help you if you're trying to grow your team or indeed if you're trying to grow your career in the world of remote work, because, as I said, they're common things, that common threads that CEOs have mentioned to me in my conversations with them in terms of things that are important to them, and I've highlighted, or at least identified, seven pillars, and one of those pillars is trust, and that's what I'm going to talk to you about today. The other six I will talk about in subsequent shows. So another pillar is communication, another is technology, another is culture. Define goals is another one, entrepreneurial spirit and living values. So those are the seven common themes I've identified that I'm going to share with you Over the course of another few episodes, but today I just want to talk to you briefly about trust, and trust is something that crops up, as I said, very often in conversations, not just with remote businesses, but with CEOs in general.

Speaker 1

3:07

Because, after all, we're talking about business in this particular podcast and, okay, trust is important to all types of business, but I think it's especially important to remote businesses because it's that much more difficult to establish in a remote business. Because, after all, how do you go about establishing trust, not just with your team, but just, generally speaking, with your brand? But let's talk about team today, let's talk about how you might establish trust within your team and, I think, even if you don't run a team, if you're looking to get into a remote team, this is something that you should think about when it comes to your interviews, to your meetings that you might have coming up, because you're going to need to demonstrate to the person sitting in front of you that they can trust you. So I've highlighted seven different aspects of trust, or seven different ways in which you can build trust within your team within your organisation to really help you to thrive. And just before I give you those seven different ideas, it's important because, obviously, reputation, the reputation of your business, is important, the reputation of your team is important. So you know, reputation of your customers you need customers to be able to survive in business. You also need to be able to hire the right people in your team in order to fulfill the needs of those customers in order to survive. So this is why I put so much emphasis on trust.

Speaker 1

4:49

So one of the ways and this is not in any particular order, but one of the ways in which I found that remote teams, remote leaders, remote CEOs really develop trust within their team, really help it to evolve, really help it to nurture that trust in the team is one of the things is by doing meetups. They do a lot of meetups and not just video, not just audio, but face-to-face. And I was talking to Darcy Bowles, who is a leader within TaxJar, if you look at taxjarcom. She was talking about meeting up at least once, if not twice, a year, because you can get those when you're on I don't know you're on a phone call with somebody, with a colleague, or if you are, I don't know, on FaceTime with a colleague, it's not the same as meeting them face to face. You can derive so much more information about somebody having met them face to face and it helps you to build upon the relationship that you've established in your various conversations by email, in writing, you know, on video chat etc. So they tend to meet up twice a year, I think. Um, they have something which is called jar fest and it's it's uh, it sounds, it sounds like fun, and I think that's another thing is when you meet somebody face to face in an environment that's not necessarily concentrated on work, then that becomes you become a bit more relaxed. You get to know the person behind that particular conversation that you had with them via email. So that's, meetups are something that are really, I suppose, really sort of part and parcel of many of the best remote teams. So that's one way that you might really help that to nurture within your team.

Speaker 1

6:46

Another way in which you could really, I suppose, hone in on building that trust is through open communication, and that communication can be in various ways. So you know, if you're working on a project and if your team is working on projects, then they need to be able to, I suppose, have that written communication to make sure that everything is communicated clearly, concisely and efficiently, effectively. And communication, as well, is not just in writing, it can be, again, through video chat, and that communication can be feedback. You can give feedback to your colleagues, you can give feedback to your team, and that feedback has to be obviously as open as possible. Even if it's an uncomfortable conversation that you might have with somebody about the way that they're performing on your team, then that conversation needs to be had in a way that is democratic, in a way that is, you know, is productive, I suppose, in many ways, so that you can give your feedback to that person without completely, you know, give your, your feedback to that person without completely, um, you know, undermining their confidence. So what? So what you'll you'll get from that is you'll get them understanding that you've got their best interests at heart, that you, you know, you really want to to help them to improve themselves as well. And, of course, that feedback is not always just going to be things that perhaps are not going well. It's also going to be feedback based on things that they are doing well. So there is, has to be a balance there and that trust will grow with that feedback, with that communication.

Speaker 1

8:29

And nick nick francis, who is the ce of Help Scout, also talked about vulnerability in communication. So, especially if you're in a leadership role, there has to be a certain amount of vulnerability, a certain amount of openness, especially where remote business, where remote teams are concerned. That openness is important because, again, there are so many more challenges working remotely than there are working in a co-located business. So you have to be open about your feelings in many ways. But if you're managing somebody, you have to be quite skillful in the way in which you can not just, I suppose, communicate your feelings but also understand how your colleague might be feeling so that you can help them out in the best possible way possible. So, yeah, open communication is number two on my list. So we've had meetups and meeting face-to-face and meeting in person, and number two is open communication. And just before I go on, I mean I read some.

Speaker 1

9:37

As I said, distrust issue is very important and there was some research. In fact, there was a global CEO survey undertaken by PWC and it reported that 55% of CEOs think that a lack of trust is a threat to their organization's growth. So you can see that it's not just me talking about trust. It's that trust is something that is considered you know, the fabric of some of the best organizations and it's something that's obviously you know the fabric of some of the best organizations and it's something that's obviously in the mind at the forefront of some of the CEOs. That PwC included as part of its survey and there's some more information here that I've been reading upon. It says being trusted makes a difference in the sense that, compared with people at low trust companies, people at high trust companies report 74% less stress, 106% more energy, 50% higher productivity, 13% fewer sick days, 76% more engagement and 29% more satisfaction with their lives in general and 40% less burnout. So yeah, trust again is very important and those two things I mentioned earlier on meeting up and communication are part of that.

Speaker 1

10:59

Number three on my list is setting an example. As a manager, you need to set an example because you need to do what you say when you're going to do it. So do what you say and not just sort of handing things out. I suppose if you agree to a certain deadline or a certain meeting yourself or a certain piece of work or meeting at a certain time, for example, you need to be there setting the example so that people can begin to see that you are a person who sticks to their word. That can build trust in that team as well. And, conversely, if you show up late or don't do as you say you're going to do, then people begin to wonder what's this person all about. Another important area on my list is sharing information. It's number four on my list and, by the way, these are not in any particular order. So sharing information.

Speaker 1

11:59

I used to work in an organization where the people within the organization would keep information to themselves. It was a environment. It was quite a quite a hostile sales environment in the sense that it was every man for themselves and anything, any information that each one of these sales people would research. They would just keep it to themselves because they want to make the sale. You'd even get to a point where some of them would steal, in inverted commas, the the customers from from their colleagues. What I mean by that is there may be somebody who had been working with or talking to a particular prospect for days and days and was getting close to the sale. That particular person was really close and the rules of this particular organisation that I worked in were that if you close that particular deal then it was your deal. So you can imagine, if you're close to getting a sale and then somebody just jumps in and essentially picks your pocket in some ways and closes the deal that you've been working on, it can really build a sense of mistrust. You know, not sharing the information between people, between colleagues, has essentially, in this organisation, brought it to a point where people are stealing again in inverted commas the information, the, the deals, the, I don't know, the reconnaissance that, um, somebody else has worked on and it just, it just built a really a really, like I said, hostile and quite toxic atmosphere. So, conversely, in a, in an organisation where people share information, that sort of thing wouldn't happen, because if your colleague next to you is working on a deal and you can see that in the CRM, then you will just stay clear of that particular person's relationship that they're building with that prospect. That prospect, and that is something that, as I said, didn't happen in that organization that I used to work in.

Speaker 1

14:13

So number five on my list is producing results, because I, you could say what you do. You could say it till the cows come home. You could say it at the top of your lungs that you do this, that and the other, but if you don't produce results yourself, then I think then you begin to lose credibility and therefore you lose trust. So producing results and this is not just when it comes to you and your business, but that filters down into your team as well. So if you're hiring somebody, I'm sure, who's said that they're great at a certain skill, a certain area of work, you expect them to produce results. So I think the very least you can expect sorry, the very least that they can expect of you is that you could do the same as well producing results and not just producing results. And this leads me on to number six is being consistent with those results, because it's all well and good producing results in one or two different times of the year or times of the month, but if you can produce that consistently throughout the month or throughout the year or throughout the quarter that you're working in, and that again can build trust not only within your team but also within the organisation as well. So producing results, but producing them on a consistent basis.

Speaker 1

15:46

Number seven on my list is empathy, and I think, um, you can build trust with somebody. If you're the kind of manager who who can really understand your teammates and begin to understand and that that takes time, I I agree and I'm I'm sure that it's. It's not something that you can really just do overnight, building, building that empathy with your teammates. But if you can build the empathy and you can begin to understand what they're going through, what their challenges are, and beginning to really sort of be that person who helps them through those challenges, they begin to really trust you, to really understand that you're there for them and that you're there for their own, not just for your own self-development, but also to develop them as well as part of the team and as part of the business. So, yeah, those are the seven areas I've highlighted. What other areas do you think could help you in your team to build trust?

Speaker 1

16:48

Um, let me know if you in the in the actual well, there's no comments in this particular uh thread, or there may be comments depending on where you're listening, because the podcast is available on stitcher. It's available on. Um, where else are we available? We're available on Stitcher. It's available on. Where else are we available? We're available on Google. We're available through various other means. I'm just having a look on my list here just to see where else we're available, but leave a comment just below to tell me how else you might build trust. We're also available on Spotify as well obviously, itunes too.

Speaker 1

17:25

So if you can't leave a comment, then please leave a rating for the podcast. Is it being helpful? Is it helpful for you? Has it helped you in any way? I'll be talking about other pillars, the other six pillars, which are an important part of your, your development, your work in the world of remote work, and these are, as I mentioned to you before, themes that I have derived, I guess, from my various conversations with hiring managers and CEOs in the world of remote work. But, as I said, please a rating. Leave a comment below as well, or leave your feedback below as well in terms of what you want to hear from the Remote Work Life podcast. Look at the show notes too, please as well, because I'd love to hear from you via LinkedIn. My LinkedIn contact details are in the show notes and please join us in the Facebook group search for Remote Work Life Accelerator and enjoy the conversation. You can also ask questions there. I'll be happy to answer them and connect with you and look out for the next episode of the Remote Work Life podcast.