Five steps to gain trust as a remote leader
Trust is the most cherished value for any leader. Trust happens naturally if the leadership is transparent. To put it simply: the higher the transparency you have as an organization, the more trust you have in the leadership.
Let’s discuss a simple 5-step approach to install transparency in your company.
Without trust, your team will fall apart. It doesn’t matter if your company is remote or not, but if you are operating a remote company, trust becomes the most important value for your team. Without trust, you will end up with a group of freelancers and hired guns instead of a proper remote team.
Transparency creates trust. But how can we create transparency? I think transparency is not a mystery - it is just a certain amount of accessibility to specific work areas. Five areas, to be specific.
So, to have trust as a leader, you need to be transparent. To become transparent, you need to provide access for your team to five critical areas of your practice.
These areas are:
Information
Operation
Communication
Completion
Decision
I created the transparent leadership triangle, which describes the whole process. The more areas you give access to, the higher the transparency level you have, which means the more trust you cultivate.
Let’s start with information. It is the simplest one, and most remote companies accomplish this level.
Have a central hub where you have all the information about the company
Give unrestricted access to your team to all the information
The second level, operation, can be controversial, but most companies also take steps toward this.
Have a hub of projects where your team can follow all the projects, regardless if they are involved
Announce and communicate what’s going on within the company with everyone
Bonus tip for the brave ones: share all operational metrics with metrics (finance, revenue, users, company performance, etc.)
In the first two layers, remember: the more you share, the more transparent your company becomes.
The third level is communication. The goal is to be clear, precise, and accessible and stop gossip or guessing.
As a leader, make yourself available for your team and allocate time to support them
Communicate team-wide more, communicate 1:1 less
Document all communication and share documentation with everyone in the hub
This level is often misunderstood. To be practical, you have to forget 1:1 chats on Slack and focus more on team-wide group chats. The more people see what is happening, the less likely you end up with misalignment.
The fourth level is completion. At this stage, you provided access to all information and operational metrics, and your communication is as transparent as possible. Now you need to share performance metrics.
Track team-wide performance based on outcomes and share the outcomes with everyone
Company-wide performance (i.e., roadmap) is shareable as well with everyone
Bonus tip for the brave ones: share individual performance with everyone
It sounds common sense, right? However, this is where most companies fail. Remember the “secretive” talks with HR on your performance? Or when team A has no idea if team B completed something that is meaningful for both parties because their leaders rarely update each other?
The last stage is decision. I admit that I saw only a handful of companies that reached this level. I shared how to make async decisions before here. To get the gist, you need to involve your team in decision-making.
Have a transparent decision-making process where everyone on your team has an input
Share the collaborative, transparent decision with everyone
It is the most challenging part, as every leader protects their decision-making process. You might cry out loud: making decisions is what makes leaders. No, it’s not. At least not in a remote company.
The leaders recommend, facilitate, and drive a decision. But the process is shared. Sharing it makes everyone feel included - everyone accepts the decision and the way forward.
#TLDR
To gain trust, you need to be transparent as a leader.
Transparency is a matter of accessibility. You have to provide team-wide access to 5 areas.
Information. Have a company-wide information hub with unrestricted access.
Operation. Share all operational data with everyone.
Communication. Be accessible to your team and communicate team-wide, not 1:1.
Completion. Share completed projects, milestones, and performance with everyone.
Decision. Make the decision-making process transparent and involve your team.
I hope we build more transparent companies together.
Peter
