Chris On The Bridge: Trust From Home

During the pandemic I shared a short series of videos about some of the software development and teamwork topics that Lab Zero was facing. Here's one about trust and how it shows up in remote team work.

Trust is an essential ingredient in the way Lab Zero operates. We work well together because we build a high level of trust between our teammates. When trust is high everything runs smoothly. When we shifted to primarily working from home, we had to adapt to some new things in order to preserve or re- establish trust.

How are your co-workers addressing trust when working as a distributed team?

This is Chris with Lab Zero. Hope you are well. Hope everything's good with you.

I'm running out doing another errand for essential services here, so I figured I'd drop a line. And the thought on my mind today is about about this switch to everybody working remotely.

Personally I loved going into the office. I love getting out of my house. And it's good for me to go work in the office. But the adjustment around that hasn't been so so bad, I'm making it work, rolling with it. The adjustment that is trickier and something that's like it's even a little harder to put your finger on - it's about trust.

One of these things - my team works really well in a under the umbrella of trust. We need to trust our team members, we need to trust our clients, we need to build trust. And that trust gets a little harder when everybody's sprinkled around the country. And I would say that that trust is something that we still are able to emphasize or build -- through effective communication skills, slacking for success, working the video conferencing like it's going out of style. (a little traffic here...)

These things are all really important because if your team has that rapport and understands what to expect from each other, and delivers what's expected -- and don't engage in a parade of surprises, trust will be high. And when trust is high everything else moves smoothly.

And I trust that you are doing everything for your team to emphasize and build the trust already present there. Curious to hear what's working for you and what's not. Drop a line if you can...

Alright, be well! Bye

More from this "Chris On The Bridge" series:

• Build To Learn
• Self-Healing Teams
• Embrace Risk
• Are You Agile?
• What Is Essential?
• Trust From Home