We were recently working with a global virtual tech team with members in London, New York, and Chicago. People within each of these locations worked together well, but they did not often include team members from other locations. As a result, silos formed. Not surprisingly, the silos and lack of information sharing were impacting team performance. Morale was low, decision-making was slow, and things were getting bogged down.

Happily, there are ways to break down the silos, build trust, and increase collaboration. It starts with the chicken-and-egg question. That is, do high-performing teams create trust, or does trust create high-performing teams?

Our previous global study on virtual collaboration found that top-performing virtual teams report higher levels of trust than teams that are less successful. This research confirms what we have learned from many years of experience with virtual teams: Trust is a foundational ingredient and precondition for their success.

Despite the importance of trust in virtual collaboration, building trust can be quite difficult. Our Virtual Experience survey reinforced this, with 39% of respondents reporting that trust is a challenge virtually. Many organizations do not appreciate how working remotely makes it more difficult to build strong relationships. Physical distance makes it harder to find shared experiences that human beings use to help forge personal relationships that help build trust.

Co-located teams see each other regularly and have an ongoing series of interactions. Virtual teams must rely heavily on task-based trust, which is the belief that team members will do their job. Accountability, then, is at the center of the relationship. Of course, task-based trust does not happen on its own, either. It must be developed, and that occurs when virtual team members are responsive, follow through on commitments, and take responsibility for results.

Warning Signs of Low Trust

When trust is low in a virtual team, members will struggle to be successful. There are a few warning signs of low trust that everyone should watch out for:

• Team members not referring to themselves as “we,” focusing instead on their personal needs and agendas. If team members do not feel they are getting the support they need, or everyone is focused on their own needs, it's not an environment that's conducive to trust.
• Every conversation is strictly business. Intimacy is one of the essential elements for building trust, and it requires more effort when working from a distance. Your team members don't have to know every detail of each other's lives, but they should know something about their families and what's important to them. When one member of a high-performing virtual team sent a gift certificate on behalf of the entire team for two nights of doggie day care to another member who had just gotten a puppy for her birthday, it spoke volumes about personal knowledge and went a long way to build trust. If you can find common ground when it comes to things like fitness, kids, geopolitics, or favorite television shows, it is far easier to reach an understanding when it counts. Scheduling regular team-building activities, which for virtual teams are becoming more creative through technology, is much more important since virtual teams do not typically interact outside of a work context.
• Silos developing among subgroups. Hosting regular team meetings, brainstorming sessions, and status updates in which everyone participates can help team members see how their individual contributions fit into the big picture and break down silos. Whenever possible, make the effort to connect with your virtual team on video where you can see facial expressions and members’ remote workspaces, which lets you read and acknowledge their environments. Good communication helps team members ensure that everyone is accountable and that no one person is being forced to pick up the slack.
• Micromanagement. Excessive oversight suggests that people do not trust others to follow through on commitments. Within virtual teams, there is a temptation for leaders to check in more often because they don't see their team members face to face. But there is a difference between checking in to see if someone needs support and constantly monitoring their progress. When team members feel like they are being watched all the time, or, even worse, nagged, they will rightly conclude that their leader does not trust them. Virtual leaders need to work with each team member to find out just how much management they need to do their work effectively. Since this will vary from person to person and project to project, leaders must work to build these relationships and tailor their management and communications styles to each member of the team.
• Conflicts not being resolved. Unresolved conflicts cause lingering resentment or even hostility. When someone makes a misstep or does something aggravating, do your team members talk about it to everyone except that person? If so, that's a sign of a potentially toxic environment. It is impossible to be trustful if you are looking over your shoulder wondering if you will be the next target. Although managing conflict can be challenging, taking the time to air out disagreements can diffuse the tension. While the underlying issues may not be solved, simply knowing that they are being heard can help get past disagreements and refocus the team.
• Playing the blame game. If people point the finger the other way and no one takes accountability (or is held accountable) for their actions, it is a sure sign your team suffers from a lack of trust. When teams are built upon mutual trust, people should feel free to have open and honest communication about what went wrong and how to fix it. Team members who refuse to take accountability when things go wrong are more concerned with their own survival than with the team's success. Effective leaders find ways to reset expectations and make sure that everyone understands why their tasks are valuable to the team.
• The Superhero phenomenon. Do some team members consistently try to take on too much themselves and then look for the affirmation of being a superhero? This can signal a lack of trust. Reliability is an important component of trust, one that can only be built over time. In high-performing teams each member pulls his or her weight. Within virtual teams, the instinct for some to take on additional work often begins from a good place, but it can quickly turn into resentment if a team member feels that others aren't doing their part. Conversely, team members who feel like other people do not trust them to do their jobs quickly become frustrated over not having an opportunity to prove they can make valuable contributions to the team.

Be cognizant of these warning signs and better understand what high and low trust look like when working virtually. Here are some examples of high trust versus low trust environments.

Examples of Low Trust

Examples of High Trust

Building Trust in a Virtual Team: The Credibility Factor

If you have ever worked with someone you did not trust, you know how difficult and unpleasant it is to get anything done. Trust is the binding agent that holds all relationships together; without it, relationships and teams disintegrate quickly. Virtual teams can be more susceptible to trust issues simply because they do not have the same opportunities for interaction as teams that are located under one roof. Trust consists of four elements that develop through a series of interactions over time:¹

1. Reliability: Consistent behavior shows that people can depend on one another. Example: A co-worker delivers on a promise to meet a tight deadline, and the client is thrilled.
2. Intimacy: Close, familiar, and authentic behavior creates affection between team members. Example: A few days later, she tells a funny story about her four-year-old daughter.
3. Orientation: The extent to which others believe you care about their concerns. Example: A few weeks later, she fills in for a colleague who is dealing with a family crisis.
4. Credibility: The quality of being believable, truthful, and a source of expertise or authority. Example: A few months later, she offers her expertise and makes recommendations on how to handle a situation the team has not encountered before.

Let's take a closer look at the role credibility plays when building trust in a virtual team.

If team members believe someone is selectively disclosing information or putting a positive spin on the facts in order to gain support, his or her credibility will suffer. People demonstrate credibility through credentials, words, and actions. Being perceived as credible is not only a matter of what someone says, but how they say it and how consistent their actions are with their words.

Within a virtual team, it can be more difficult to get to know other team members. Casual conversations are less frequent, and context is frequently lost through email, Slack, or even phone conversations. When someone has recently joined a team or is new to a leadership role, team members may not know much about them. When a leader spends intentional time up front with new members of the team, to get to know their past experiences, goals and aspirations, and personal stories, it builds credibility.

Decision-making can also be less transparent within a virtual team. Leaders may make decisions in silos, without understanding how their actions may impact someone in another location. Team members who only hear the final decision may believe it was made hastily or without consideration, when in fact it just as easily may have followed a rigorous process they had not observed. They may perceive the leader as someone who makes snap judgments, rather than adhering to best practices.

Unless virtual leaders and team members have established credibility, they will never have the level of trust required to motivate and inspire their team and maintain high levels of productivity.

As a leader, here are tips for enhancing trust in virtual teams:

• Provide opportunities to build relationships. If possible, new virtual teams should meet face to face at least once within the first few months.
• Offer professional networking opportunities for team members to share their capabilities. Hosting “lunch and learn” sessions where team members take turns presenting on a topic where they have expertise can improve their credibility and make others more likely to consult them when they need help. These don't have to be on topics related to the business. One team had a monthly Zoom session presenting on “sharing your unknown talent,” and reports are that after a colleague gave a detailed presentation on gemology, his stature within the group skyrocketed.
• Speak the truth. Respond to questions in an honest and complete manner to deliver clarity and transparency. Be balanced – communicate the positive aspects as well as the downsides – when making a proposal. Avoid withholding information that may weaken your position but that others would find useful when deciding.
• Highlight successes. A proven track record of success is one of the best indicators of credibility. Encourage team members to share their wins through email, during meetings, or social media pages when appropriate. One highly distributed team created a punchy, well-designed weekly news roundup of the extended team's wins. But rather than just list the success stories, they put them in the context of external market developments, and always did so with the engaging lines “What you need to know,” and “Why it matters.”
• Encourage and role-model transparency. Emphasize the importance and show the power of being open and honest. Invite team members to regularly share their challenges as well as their successes, whether during meetings or by posting them in an internal forum and opening them up for discussion. Lead by example to give permission to others to do the same. Whenever possible, make project timelines, agreements, and processes fully transparent. Recognize that employees increasingly view transparency as something to which they're entitled. A major omni-channel retail CHRO shared in our interview with him that the desire [or demand] for transparency currently exceeds any previous expectations.
• Admit when you don't know something. Few things are a bigger turn off than a know-it-all. Rather than pretending to know everything, or even if you do, virtual leaders should set an example by being vulnerable, genuinely soliciting the input of others, and always admitting, even advertising, what they don't know. Leaders should consult other colleagues and experts for information and encourage team members to do the same. Aaron Walters, chairman and CEO of the women's retailer Altar'd State, told us that we “opened up [our] leadership team's visibility and vulnerability, and it has had a massive impact. [We] were rated 83 out of 100 in the Great Places to Work Survey and now [we] are over 90, in a pandemic.”

Building trust within a virtual team takes time and focus, but it is worth the effort. In a study of 600 virtual team members, 81% reported that building rapport and trust was the greatest personal challenge they faced. Our own research on virtual teams shows that trust is one of the most important factors distinguishing top-performing teams from less successful ones. The ability to foster trust within a team is a skill that leaders can develop through training and development. For virtual teams to be successful, team members need to have confidence in one another's credibility. Remote workers are not afforded the same level of networking as in-office teams, so avoid taking the nature of trust for granted.

Trust is built naturally among teams that interact in person each day, but it takes more effort to develop among teams that rarely (if ever) meet face to face. Virtual leaders need to create an environment that fosters trust. When trust breaks down, however, they will struggle to be productive.

The Bottom Line

• Trust is a prerequisite for virtual team success, but it is harder to build virtually: 39% of executives report experiencing challenges in building trust in a remote environment. Building task-based trust early on is important for virtual teams.
• Leaders can create a trusting environment through open, frequent, and transparent communication; by encouraging team members to share aspects of their personal lives to build intimacy; and by admitting when they don't know something.
• Signs of low virtual trust include poor communication, a culture of blame, unresolved conflicts, a lack of follow though, silos, and an “I” orientation instead of a “we” orientation.