One of the primary prerequisites for any successful virtual team is to establish trust among your team members.
This post will give you simple and easy to implement trust building activities that will help you build a solid level of trust within your team.
Let’s start with what trust actually means.
What is trust?
Here’s one definition:
Trust is the assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something. (from Merriam-Webster)
Although this is a good definition, trust is still a nebulous concept because it is not tangible.
You cannot see it, hear it, or quantify it.
Plus, trust is not like an on/off light switch.
You can’t have trust or not have trust within a team.
Trust is more like a spectrum, where you have varying degrees of trust that range from very low to very high.
This makes it trickier to manage.
Nevertheless, creating a high degree of trust in a virtual environment is vital to the success of the team because individuals who trust each other produce more.
On the other hand, a low degree of trust results in a lack of commitment, poor team performance, and negative energy among the team.
Because there can be many factors involved, such as cultures, personalities, communication, and dispersion, establishing trust can be a complicated process.
However, developing trust among a virtual team can be accomplished by following a methodical process through trust building activities.
Before we get into those trust building activities, let me give you the secret formula for trust that will help guide you with your strategy of keeping trust high among your team.
The Secret Formula for Trust
Here is the secret formula for establishing trust:
Trust = Reliability + Likeability
That’s it.
Trust is equal to the level of reliability plus the level of likeability.
So to increase trust among the team, you need to increase the level of reliability or increase the level of likeability, or both.
The 9 trust building activities below will show you how to do that in simple steps. There are 4 activities for increasing reliability, and 5 activities for increasing likeability.
Here’s a quick at-a-glance summary of those trust building activities.
Summary of the 9 Trust Building Activities
How to increase reliability (4 trust building activities)
- Activity 1: Verify Skills
- Activity 2: Be Explicit
- Activity 3: Lead by Example
- Activity 4: Count on Others
How to increase likeability (5 trust building activities)
- Activity 1: Get Personal
- Activity 2: Encourage Social Interactions
- Activity 3: Over-communicate
- Activity 4: Meet Face to Face
- Activity 5: Be Positive
I realize that those trust building activities are not necessarily “activities” in the sense that they’re games or exercises you do as a group, but more of deliberate tasks or actions that you implement on a consistent basis.
That’s because building trust among your team cannot be effective as an objective unless you treat it as a constant, deliberate set of activities that you execute over time, and not as a one-off task like playing a team building game.
Let’s start with the first component of the trust formula (reliability) and the four trust building activities to increase it.
How to Increase Reliability (4 Trust Building Activities)
What is reliability?
Reliability is basically the ability and dependability of a team member to accomplish a task according to pre-defined objectives.
This is usually referred to by psychologists as the cognitive trust component, and it is a function of a person’s ability and integrity.(Source)
In other words, it answers the question: can the person get the job done in a reliable way?
Here are the four trust building activities to increase reliability among your team:
Activity 1: Verify Skills
The main root cause of a lack of reliability among virtual teams is a lack of proper team skills, so the first step you should do is verify them.
There are two types of skills: technical skills and collaboration skills.
- Technical Skills are the skills needed to do the job itself (e.g., software development skills or engineering skills).
- Collaboration skills are skills needed to interact and communicate in a virtual environment (e.g., virtual technology or communication skills). Those skills are sometimes considered a part of your typical “soft” skills.
Both types of skills are essential to make sure that there is a high degree of reliability among your team, and you should verify both of them with your team members before they start their roles.
Some questions you can ask your team members when assessing their skills include: “Are you comfortable doing this task?” or “Do you have any concerns about this project?”
Activity 2: Be Explicit
The second trust building activity is to be as explicit as you can with expectations and requests when communicating with your team.
You cannot rely on someone to do a task if they’re not 100% clear on what they have to do. So say exactly what you want (and when you want it), and don’t leave requests open to interpretation or assumptions.
You also want to keep communicating throughout the task’s timeframe to make sure there are no misunderstandings.
Activity 3: Lead by Example
The third trust building activity to increase reliability is to set an example of how reliable you are to your own virtual team.
This is because your team actually looks up to your behavior as the standard reference point of how they should behave.
If you’re not reliable with your own commitments, you implicitly give your team permission to behave accordingly.
In short: Lead by example.
When you say you will do something, do it.
Activity 4: Count on Others
The fourth trust building activity is to count on others to do their job.
Although this might sound counterintuitive, counting on others to do their job will increase their level of reliability.
Research shows that “a propensity to believe others can be counted on to do what they say they will do is an important precursor to the development of trust.” (Source)
Show your team members that you trust them, and they’ll become more reliable.
A Quick Comment on Reliability
Keep in mind that no matter how much you try increasing the level of reliability among your team, there are certain people who are just poor performers.
Those individuals will affect the entire team by free-riding, and creating a negative environment of distrust.
You can try addressing poor performance issues by having honest conversations about conduct, but understand that there’s only so much you can do, and sometimes, letting team members go is the best solution for you and the team.
How to Increase Likeability (5 Trust Building Activities)
We talked about the secret formula for trust being: Trust = Reliability + Likeability, and that to increase trust, we need to increase reliability or likeability, or both.
The previous 4 trust building activities were about how to increase reliability. The following 5 trust building activities are about how to increase likeability.
What is likeability?
Likeability is the forming of emotional ties between members of a team, and is the result of social bonds developed in a reciprocal relationship between two people.
It is usually referred to as the affective trust component, which is based on assessments of benevolence. (Source)
In other words, it answers the question: “Do I like the person enough to trust that they’d do the job?”
So how do you increase likeability?
Likeability in a virtual team can be increased similar to how it’s increased in physical teams, but it takes a little more effort and time.
Here are 5 trust building activities that will help you out.
Activity 1: Get Personal
The first trust building activity to increase likeability is to get personal. Virtual teams can sometimes feel very transactional and dry because everyone is usually focused on completing their tasks and getting their job done.
However, getting to know your team members on a personal level is one of the fastest ways to increase likeability.
You can accomplish that by learning about your team members’ families, vacation plans, and hobbies through informal discussions.
Leading by example works here as well. If you share personal anecdotes about yourself, then your team will feel more at ease about opening up to you.
Important side note: Make sure you don’t violate any local laws or company policies when asking personal questions. Keep in mind that even though it’s probably OK to ask high-level personal questions, you don’t want to get too intrusive. And stay away from discussing religion or politics – those are always sensitive topics.
Activity 2: Encourage Social Interactions
One major drawback of virtual teams is that they lack the “water cooler” effect, where employees in a physical office typically gather around a water cooler to chat.
Encouraging social interactions will help you create a virtual water cooler to increase team likeability and cohesion among your team.
One way to accomplish that is to start or end conversations you have in meetings that are unrelated to work. Spending a few minutes upfront talking about anything informal is a great way to break the ice and get everyone talking.
Another strategy is to use the power of small gives, where you can share articles, videos or events (through email or Instant Messaging) that you think your team members might be interested in.
This creates a nice degree of intimacy and cohesion among your team.
Finally, you can also schedule separate meetings (or portions of meetings) that are dedicated to team building or team bonding exercises.
I actually wrote a detailed blog post about how you can encourage social interactions with your team members through some fun virtual team building activities.
Here’s the link:
Activity 3: Over-Communicate
The third trust building activity to increase likeability is to “over-communicate” with your team. In other words, you need to regularly interact with them.
This is based on a theory developed by psychologists at MIT called the “Propinquity Effect,” which states that the more you interact with someone, the more you’ll like them and become friends with them.
Repeat exposure through over communication among your team will eventually lead to an increase in liking.
So stay in touch with your team members at least once every day (or every other day), even if it’s not absolutely essential.
An easy way to do this is to connect with them using Instant Messaging software, or give them a quick call every once in a while to check on things.
Activity 4: Meet Face to Face
Meeting with your team members face to face at least once (especially right after a project starts), is the single best thing you can do to increase liking among your team.
Face to face meetings help with establishing rapport, understanding mannerisms, and reducing miscommunication.
Although bringing a team together in one room could be a large expense if your team is widely distributed, it is still worth it down the line, particularly in long-term projects.
However, if meeting face to face is not possible due to budgetary or other constraints, then using video conferencing as a secondary option definitely helps.
Activity 5: Be Positive
The final trust building activity to increase likeability is to be positive with your attitude.
No one enjoys working with individuals who are constantly negative and pessimistic.
Although it is quite natural to go through some high-stress times while working in virtual teams, what matters is how you react during those times with your team.
Having a constant positive attitude (and encouraging others to do the same) will increase the level of likeability among the team.
Conclusion
In summary, those 9 trust building activities can increase the level of trust within your team by increasing the level of reliability and likeability.
To increase reliability, make sure you (1) verify skills (2) be explicit (3) lead by example, and (4) count on others.
And to increase likeability, you should (1) get personal (2) encourage social interactions (3) over-communicate (4) meet face to face and (5) be positive.
I hope you found those trust building activities helpful.
Cheers,
Hassan
P.S. – Those trust building activities are an excerpt from my #1 Amazon Bestselling Book “Influencing Virtual Teams“
