How To Build Trust Virtually

With more and more Zoom calls becoming symbolic of our shift to remote working, are you often feeling zoomed out?

With our workdays now defined and driven by multiple online calls each day, building trust virtually is fundamental to delivering business outcomes. But it’s also becoming increasingly difficult.

Research conducted a few years ago, prior to COVID-19, found that virtual teams tend to be more productive and less costly to organizations. With the onset of COVID-19 and even with the gradual reopening of the economy, working remotely will remain the norm for quite some time, and teams will need to work remotely for the foreseeable future. The underpinning of remote work is trust, but how can you build trust in a virtual workplace?

Let’s start with a quick understanding of what exactly trust in the digital age looks like. There are two types of trust we’ll take into consideration: affective trust and cognitive trust.

Affective trust constitutes a form of trust based on emotional bond and interpersonal relatedness

 Cognitive trust arises from reliability and competence

Another way to think about it is: Affective trust is how you feel about the person’s intentions, while cognitive trust is how well you think that person will act on their intentions.

To manage a remote team well, you need both affective and cognitive trust. The question is, then, how do you exactly do this through virtual team building?

1. Prioritize your onboarding

According to research, affective trust tends to be more important to foster at the beginning of a relationship. Be a company that prioritizes onboarding for new hires and sets the foundation for trust in the future...

What should this onboarding process include? Here are a few key elements for remotely onboarding your team well:

• Context about the team and mission — Create context write-ups on the company’s history, purpose, how you work (communication, meetings, etc.), business context (market analysis, product vision, etc.), and the key milestones you’re looking to hit in the upcoming six to eighteen months
• Define what success looks like — Have a first clear project. Is it clear what success will look like in the first 30, 60, 90 days?
• Encouragement — Share why you hired them. You could even write up a “Here’s why we hired you” letter
• Build rapport — Set up regular one-on-one meetings. Ask questions about work preferences

2. Be a transformative leader 

Startup teams respond best to charismatic, mission-driven leadership. Not only does a mission infuse passion into your team, but it also builds trust in your leadership. Make sure to define goals that are attainable and aligned with your whole team on an ongoing basis.

Working from home has blended our personal, professional, and family lives together under one roof, making it difficult to compartmentalize and prioritize. In a virtual setting, establishing goals is even more critical, because they define a common destination for virtual team members who feel geographically disconnected while working from home

3. Invest time getting to know your team

Onboarding is just the beginning of building trust. In a virtual environment more than ever, it’s essential you get to know your team members. One way to do so is to spend the first few minutes of your one-on-one meetings to ask about the other person’s life: Ask about their family members’ health and well-being, about a hobby, and even about their pet. Asking these questions reminds everyone that our humanity comes first.

Perhaps also set up a virtual mentoring program, or enable team members to teach each other. Managers in many organizations have set up virtual office hours or happy hours with their teams. These meetings are not mandatory and can create a personal and informal virtual setting that helps team members connect with each other.

It’s undeniable that working from home has distorted whatever work-life balance we had tried to create prior to COVID-19. Creating a clear separation between home space and workspace has become increasingly difficult. These factors take away from the continuous 9-to-5 workday, distract your team members, and stress them and the rest of the team.

The key is to remedy this is to focus on outcomes: whether you and your team members deliver what you promised, when you promised it, instead of how much time you spent on your computers. This new reality might mean that you or your team members work earlier in the morning or later at night when it is quieter at home.

The virtual workplace strips away body language cues and adds stressors like switching from one virtual meeting to another, focusing on a child who needs attention, or tending to a barking dog. When we communicate virtually, we can build trust by being transparent and being consistent by showing up, sticking to a schedule, and being prepared.

In any setting, being transparent means saying what you mean, meaning what you say, and doing what you promise in any setting. In a virtual setting, it can be tricky because of the lack of physical presence and body language clues, so pay special attention to whether your actions align with your words and whether you deliver what you promised to your team. If you cannot deliver on time or need help doing so, let your manager and your team know early, so they can help you.

Being consistent, virtually or otherwise, includes several elements, including showing up, sticking to a schedule, and being prepared. In a virtual setting, showing up means defining when you will be online and when you will be offline. When you are online, you also need to be on time.

Taking these steps will help you build trust with your team members because you will demonstrate with both your words and your actions that you are dependable, responsible, and trustworthy.