Good management has always required building trust, but in a world of remote work, trust is essential. When everyone is in the office day in and day out, it’s easy and natural to connect on both professional and personal levels. Water cooler conversations, chit chat in those few minutes before the meeting starts, a walk to grab coffee together between tasks; all these mundane realities of working in the same physical space engender connection and trust.
When work happens more remotely and, sometimes, asynchronously, those moments of connection and trust-building have to be intentionally created and sought out. Collectively we are doing more of this remote, asynchronous work these days; in 2023, 12.7 percent of full-time employees work in fully remote roles and 28.2 percent of them use a hybrid model.
Jillian Robinson, senior manager of customer support at Identity Digital, works at building trust in several ways. In addition to creating opportunities for personal sharing during meetings and one-on-ones, she plans quarterly team activities and strives to be open and transparent about team goals and the company’s direction.
“Sharing more insight into the direction of our company and team goals allows teammates to better understand how their individual actions contribute to the bigger picture and feel more motivated to work independently,” she said.
Built In Colorado sat down with Robinson to hear more about building trust in remote-management relationships.
Identity Digital is the self-described “not dot com.” The company holds a portfolio of new top-level domains, such as “.careers,” “.live,” and “.charity.”
In your experience, what are the differences between managing in person in an office versus managing team members remotely? How have you tweaked your approach to the former to suit the latter?
Managing remotely requires more trust in all aspects; trust that your teammates are completing necessary items more independently, trust in your data and reporting to see results and adjust direction, and trust in communication since non-verbal social cues are no longer visible.
To build a more trusting remote team environment, I’ve focused on being more transparent in communication. Sharing more insight into the direction of our company and team goals allows teammates to better understand how their individual actions contribute to the bigger picture and feel more motivated to work independently.
To build a more trusting remote team environment, I’ve focused on being more transparent in communication.”
Sharing the challenges we are facing and opening up for discussion allows teammates to have perspective on these impacts, and creates opportunities to be involved in problem-solving. Sharing more data and reporting allows employees to see why decisions are being made and how all of our actions, both positive and negative, impact each other and our common goals.
How do you make sure you stay connected to your direct reports without bombarding them with communication?
We touch base at the same time each morning, which allows us time to decide together what is the best approach. We decide what areas we need to tackle as a priority, what everyone’s honest individual bandwidth (both scheduled and mental) is to ensure we are succeeding collectively and allow time to share non-work related items to foster better unity.
There has been a lot of change in the world in the last several years, and the tech industry is a fast-paced, ever-changing environment, but having this routine has provided a comfortable constant that is open and supportive.
What advice do you have for leaders getting acclimated to managing a remote team?
When working in-office, teammates naturally develop relationships with each other through the conversations that occur alongside the work which creates a closer, more successful team environment. This is more difficult to achieve naturally while working remotely.
I try to always schedule enough time during meetings for this to happen at the beginning or end. I ask non-work related questions to encourage this, whether it’s asking if anyone has fun plans coming up they’d like to share, or following up on individual hobbies and interests during one-on-ones.
We also aim for a team activity once a quarter to enjoy being together in a different environment, discovering new facets of each other and creating memories that we reminisce about in future team meetings.
