When you are with other people and can observe them over time, you build up a picture of their trustworthiness. If Sam says he’ll do something, do you believe him? The words are the same whether he does or doesn’t, but your perception of whether he really will or not is informed by how he has done in similar situations in previous encounters. I call this “informed trust”.

It’s a bit harder to develop informed trust of others in a virtual team setting, where you can’t see them and where you can’t therefore observe what they do over time. So you need a new strategy: the academics call it “swift trust”, but I prefer the term “assumed trust”. Assume the other people will be trustworthy, believe that they will do what they say they will do, and then see how it goes. But also, and this is the critical point, don’t put all of your faith or hope in them actually doing the thing, so build in preliminary assessments of whether your assumed trust has some basis in reality, or not.

Over time, as you work with others more and more, your assumed trust will give way to “informed trust”, as the actions of the person demonstrate their real trustworthiness.

What Do I Need To Do?
Firstly, you have to be trustworthy … Worthy of the trust of others. If you say you will do something, do it. If you realize all of a sudden that you can’t do it … renegotiate; don’t spring a lack of delivery upon others as a surprise. You can’t see all of the implications of your delivery to time or not on the behalf of the others, but you’d better believe that they exist.

Secondly, too, is the need to be clear about what you are trusting the others to do and be. In terms of doing, ensure that you really know what the others are saying that they will do. It is no use having a different definition of “doing” if you can overcome the issue through some persistent questioning. In terms of being, that’s much more about character, and what the others are really like. You only get to know that through repeated observations or interactions.

And thirdly, either don’t hold the promises of others to tightly, or build in some leeway in case things don’t go as they were supposed to go. Perhaps they really did try, but things went bad at the end. So build in interim deadlines so you aren’t caught in too hard a situation.

See A-Z of Virtual Teams: Summary for the complete list.