WLP241 Visible Teamwork and Trust in Remote Teams
In today’s episode, Pilar looks at how trust can be built in remote teams through visible teamwork - and what we need to look out for to make sure it doesn’t disappear.
The principles of Visible Teamwork can be found here, and follow three areas:
Deliberate Communication
Work Visibility
Planned Spontaneity
It’s important to understand how trust is built when we design our new communication practices - and to make sure we don’t introduce the risk of trust breaking down due to our new way of working.
1. PROPENSITY TO TRUST
Not everyone can trust other people straight away - some need more information than others to trust that someone else is getting on with the work, or behaving in the best interest of the team. For managers with low propensity to trust, not being able to see team members or their work can be stressful. We need to bear the differences in propensity to trust in mind.
2. WHAT MAKES UP TRUST?
Charles H. Green has put together the Trust Equation, where he identifies reliability, integrity and transparency as increasing our trust in others. Other trust models also identify competence as a trust-builder.
Reliability – do you do what you say you’re going to do? Or, just as important, do you communicate when you’re not going to do something you said you’d do? Deliberate communication can give us context.
Integrity – do your actions match the values you claim to live by? And along similar lines, do your words match your actions? Open conversations can lead to visible work, visible thinking, visible learning
Transparency – how much do you make your intentions and your thinking process available to others? Do people think you have a hidden agenda – or more to the point, have you got a hidden agenda?
And finally, we can’t forget Competence, which is important when we’re looking at relationships at work. Can people trust you to do a good job? Or can they trust you to reach out when you need help?
3. COGNITIVE AND AFFECTIVE TRUST
Building trust in a team doesn’t just happen through social interactions. For some, understanding how people think and the kind of work they do is the kind of information they need. Understanding the difference between cognitive trust and affective trust can help us decide which aspects of visible teamwork to adopt.
ADOPTING VISIBLE TEAMWORK
Visible teamwork can build trust… or replace it.
In remote teams, unless we have an ongoing system of communication, we rely on team members having a high propensity to trust, that is, on someone’s tendency to trust others, even before that trust has been earned. Visible Teamwork can help build that trust.
For example, when team members make their work or workflow visible, their manager no longer has to trust that they’re doing the work: they can SEE that the work is being done, and so does everyone else in the team. Sharing what you’re working on is also part of being accountable to those in your team, of showing them that you have their best interest at heart by getting on with your work.
In a study carried out in 2016 involving almost 2,000 teams, the researchers found that "the level of trust has less of an impact on the effectiveness of the team when team members have access to a record of their interactions". These interactions can be your visible workflow, or open conversations in a collaboration platform.
Can Too Many Communication Processes Decrease Trust in a Team?
In addition to helping you design a system of flexible communication, the introduction of Visible Teamwork also provides you with the perfect opportunity for you and your team members to discuss your current work practices. These conversations can help with team building, as team members share what helps them do their best work, and what might get in the way. When was the last time you had one of those conversations? Maybe now is a good time.
In a team where there are high levels of trust, we want to avoid introducing processes that decrease it. For example, imagine you introduce a process of visible workflow, where we all agree that at the end of each day, we’ll update our task progress on a Kanban board. However, I might be going through a busy period and forget to update the board. I’ve done my work, but failed to communicate it. If I continuously do this, my actions might signal that I’m not doing my work, or that I don’t care enough about the team to report it. Something similar might happen if we haven’t agreed which tool we’ll use for what kind of communication and our messages go unreplied to. This might be due to a poor use of the notification settings, where important messages go unnoticed. When first introducing new communication processes, bear in mind that there will be different levels of adoption, as people find out how to make them work for them as individuals.
Remember to get in touch if you need help working as a remote team, or transitioning to an “office optional” approach. And let us know if you’re interested in our upcoming Podcasting for Connection service.
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