The HBR Work Smart Collection (4 Books)

8 New to the Team? Here’s How to Build Trust (Remotely)

by Ruchi Sinha

Trust isn’t easy to build. It develops slowly, typically after you and another person have been able to interact and assess each other’s characters. If all goes well, you start to feel psychologically safe and that you can rely on one another. But remote work has made this process difficult.

Many of us now interact on-screen and work on hybrid teams with people located around the world. We lack the luxury of regularly observing our peers in person, making it harder to gauge their intentions, values, and characters (and vice versa).

This is a problem. In any kind of work environment, you need trust for all kinds of reasons. Without it, you may not feel comfortable bringing ...