Episode description
Interview with Anand Safi, Senior Engineering Leader at Mark43. He covers methods and metrics for building trust in virtual teams while telling his story of taking over a newly founded remote team and scaling it up.
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In this interview we're covering:
- Definition of trust in the workplace
- Differences between building trust in virtual teams vs the office
- Methods for building trust in a virtual team
- Encouraging team members to build trust among each other
- Measuring trust in a virtual team
- Feedback channels in virtual teams
- Anand's story of building trust in his virtual team
Excerpt from the interview:
"At the organizational level, the metric can be transparency around communication. Once you’ve built trust with individuals, you can build organizational trust on the back of that.
As an engineer, I used to think, “I wish leadership would tell us about every problem; there is no reason not to.” As a leader partaking in some of these conversations, I’ve had to realize how fluid strategic decisions are. I prefer going to my reports with concrete information rather than updates on discussions that may change by next week.
I put effort into coaching my team to understand the leadership's position. I assure them that we’re working on a strategy, and I’ll make sure to update them when we have a plan to execute. Their reaction lets you know how much they trust the organization."