How to use trust in virtual leadership to boost team productivity

A guide to leading teams in hybrid and remote environments

Cultivating trust and placing it in others

At the start of this series we introduced the Hoxby Model of Remote Leadership? and the 14 domains in which effective virtual leaders excel. So far we have looked at several areas including communication, comfort with disagreement and team building. This week we are exploring how leaders can empower team members by creating a culture of trust, drawing on inspiration and insights from Avril Chester (CEO of Cancer Central and Ask Ave, and CTO at RIBA) and Matthew Knight (creator of the freelance community Leapers).

People at organisations with high levels of trust report 74 percent less stress, 106 percent more energy at work, 76 percent more engagement, 40 percent less burnout and—crucially—50 percent higher productivity. 

When creating the Hoxby Model of Remote Leadership? we found that a strong remote leader has high assumed trust as opposed to earned trust – in other words, they are great at delegating and assuming the work will happen. At Hoxby, leadership is underpinned by workstyle, the complete freedom to decide when and where you work. Hoxbies are trusted to deliver their work in the way that suits them best. 

We have found that the high levels of trust and autonomy enabled by this way of working also lead to higher levels of experienced responsibility (where an individual feels personally accountable for the results of the work they do). In fact, we have found in our research that Hoxbies feel so responsible for their own work – believing strongly that others on the team feel the same way – that they are likely to go above and beyond to deliver outstanding quality. 

For CTO Avril Chester, trust between her and her team forms the central pillar of her leadership at RIBA. She feels that many of the behaviours and mechanisms for unlocking trust come from good communication. For example, Avril doesn’t assume that others will know that the trust is there, so she sets expectations, keeps reminding the team and role models it in everything she does. 

One mechanism she employs to build trust in her team is every 2-3 months she will override the agenda of the senior management meeting and just use that whole session to talk about them and their teams. It’s a way to take the temperature of the department and allow the team to come together to support each other and suggest solutions. She doesn’t ask people to talk about their individual feelings (they might not be comfortable doing that in a group environment), instead asking them about their observations. What have they noticed? How is that affecting their team and what they’re trying to achieve? By creating this safe space, Avril empowers the team to have a valuable troubleshooting session that doesn’t happen in the same way when she just asks ‘What are your issues?’ 

In addition to trusting people, a leader needs to also trust the process even if they are not clear on what the deliverables are. (This might feel a bit counterintuitive given that another of the domains in the leadership model is to drive results, but bear with us.) There will be times when you step back and let the journey dictate where you need to be. It can feel scary to give that level of trust, especially when not working face-to-face, but it is critical to creating an empowered team.

When Matthew Knight started Leapers, he didn’t have a clear intention for what the community was going to be. He had identified a problem statement – that freelancers didn’t know where to turn for support on the emotional experience of freelancing, over and above the operational or functional aspects. So he decided to bring together a group of people with a common goal of solving that problem. His role as leader here was as guardian and protector, rather than a force for moving things forward. He created a safe space where people could have the necessary conversations so that he could react to the needs that came from them. As a leader he wasn’t scared to trust those around him, or the journey.

His approach empowered everyone in the community to help drive it forward. He has created a self-sustaining group that is now able to lead itself. The takeaway? If you have a challenge that needs solving, don’t feel that as the leader you have to dictate the solution. 

Key takeaways

• Next time you brief a project, emphasise trust and promote accountability by allowing freedom in how the work is delivered. Agree the deliverables and objectives and trust the team to deliver in the way they work best
• Reflect on the extent to which you trust the others that you work with. Do you trust your colleagues to deliver? If not, why not? What can you do to foster a culture of trust?

Next week we will explore the importance of driving results in virtual leadership. If you can’t wait to read the entire series or you’d like to see how the theory comes to life through real examples of brilliant virtual leadership within each domain, you can request the full PDF here.