Trust (Debugging work in a remote world, part 2)
This is part two of a series on debugging work in a remote world that I am publishing throughout January and February. You can read them as they are released on the Debugging Work newsletter or later when I post them on LinkedIn. Either way, I suggest reflecting on the topic of each short piece for at least a few days and evaluating how your own organization is succeeding or failing in that area.
There are several ingredients we must intentionally mix together to create the right conditions for effective and fulfilling long-term success with distributed teams and remote workers: trust, connection, and a sense of urgent intensity.
I’ve written before about the importance of trust. Without trust, we fill precious time with micromanaging or second guessing our coworkers. We stack our calendars with status meetings and check-ins to reassure everyone that activity is happening instead of focusing on achieving outcomes. Leaders who learned the ropes in a traditional office environment may not even realize they’re watching for signs of activity rather than outcomes. In a remote-first environment, observing activity is inefficient and ineffective. We need to focus on outcomes if we’re going to have effective, long-term remote workers.
Demoralization spreads through an org chart as people internalize a lack of trust. That negatively impacts job satisfaction and retention. It also makes people less likely to take risks, express ideas, and innovate.
Trust applies to the relationships between all stakeholders, including peer-to-peer, individual-to-manager, manager-to-individual, everyone-to-executive, and executive-to-everyone.
Trust has to be built and maintained. According to leadership consultants Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman, trust comes from:
showing good judgment,
following through on commitments, and
building good relationships.
You already know intuitively that it is incredibly difficult to trust if a relationship is damaged or was never formed in the first place. In their 2019 HBR article, Zenger and Folkman share from their research that a good leader needs to demonstrate all three elements of trust but maintaining positive relationships is the most important: “When relationships were low and both judgment and consistency were high, trust went down 33 points.”
Pause for a moment to consider which relationships you need to invest in to increase trust at work.