The Cranky Middle Manager Show #185 Building Trust Remotely with John Blackwell
Today Wayne Turmel talk about building trust in remote teams with John Blackwell. Plus we learn it takes a lot of trust to swap camels for horses and there’s still time to take part in our webinar workshop.
John Blackwell, international man of mystery
Don’t forget our webinar workshop: “How to Create and Manage Remote Teams” For more information click the links below:
For March 30th, 2009 Europe and North America click here
For March 31st, India, Asia and Australia click here
Show Notes
0:00 Welcome to show 185. Today we’re talking about building trust and connections with your remote team. Our poster child is Hapargus, takes a lot of trust to trade horses for camels, especially when your peers think you’re the enemy.
3:22 Another (and final) shameless plug for our webinar on How to Create and Manage Remote Teams. Check us out, the links are above.
4:00 The quote of the week is from Cardinal De Retz. If you can’t trust yourself, how are you going to trust your team- and trust me they’re probably better at this than you are so let it go.
4:50 Welcome back John Blackwell. Okay, I apologize for the quality of the call, blame Skype and get off my back. (hear John’s other CMM interviews by clicking here and the second show here. The economy has only sped up our working remotely and virtually.Some good research here. We will be spending less than 5% of our time on the same project in the same place as the rest of our colleagues.
10:20 John and i disagree on the definition of remote and virtual team but that doesn’t make me right. In a perfect world, it’s all about incenting, inspiring and creating connections with people you don’t see very often if at all. It’s all about what he calls “trust-based workplaces”.
Trust is composed of 3 components:
- The capacity to trust
- The perception of competence (yours and theirs)
- The perception of intentions
14:30 We say we trust our team, but do we manage them like we really do trust them? If you need to check in on them, you might be fundamentally insecure…… okay, so I’m fundamentally insecure. I confess. But don’t we sometimes have to check in without checking up on them?
19:20 How are companies helping build trust between team members who might not know each other as well as you know them. You’ve got to tap into social networking and other ways of sharing information. Those darned Gen Y kids do it better than most older folks.
23:20 How can we ensure that our intentions are clear and people are onboard with them? Do big companies get it or are they still preaching out of date concepts like “management by walking around” when it’s a long walk to Bangalore? Here are some of the mistakes companies make.
28:00 The obligatory Google management story but could YOU pass this test? Would you include your family on your 360 review? God forbid…..
Check out John’s research library. Lots of good stuff here.
Don’t forget our latest Cranky Book: 125 Quotes for Whacking Weasels, Centuries of Wisdom, Motivation and Snappy Comebacks From the Cranky Middle Manager Show
not to mention our latest book available on Amazon:
