The steep rise of virtual and remote working is driving workplace transformation. Between 2014 and 2016, the prevalence of virtual workers increased by 39%, and today you would be hard-pressed to find an organization anywhere in the world that doesn’t have virtual workers and displaced teams.
The benefits of virtual teams in a global, 24-hour economy have been well documented for many years. The challenges are also evident in an environment where co-workers may never meet face-to-face and do not share the same language, culture, or time-zone.
To manage a virtual team successfully, leaders need to acquire a new set of skills around communication, motivation, and relationship management; based on a foundation of trust that is earned from a distance.
Building trust can be difficult for any team, but it is especially challenging when team members have few opportunities to interact personally. Virtual teams often develop around projects, with people coming together and drifting away during different phases. Yet trust is the binding force for a virtual team - it provides a sense of safety that allows people to share knowledge, ideas, and opinions openly and engage in unfiltered debate.
A leader needs to build trust with their people as it becomes like a fund that builds up. If they do this consistently in adverse times, everyone can pull on that large fund of trust during the good times to help each other through. There is a huge emphasis on the actions of leaders in making this happen.
Remote team leaders, therefore, must commit to both developing and consistently demonstrating the fundamental behaviors that create and sustain trust – within themselves and across their teams: integrity, transparency, empathy, authenticity, reliability, and overall competence.