BUILDING TRUST IN REMOTE TEAMS: BEHAVIORS ASSOCIATED – Chapter 02

***Continued from Chapter 01 (Covered previously: Virtual Teams- Meaning & Interpretation, Trust in Remote Teams, Affective & Cognitive Trust)

Link to Chapter 01:

BUILDING TRUST IN VIRTUAL/ REMOTE TEAMS: BEHAVIORS ASSOCIATED- Chapter 01

Building of Affective Trust In Remote Teams

01: Prioritize On Boarding More Than We Usually Do:

According to research, affective trust tends to be more important to foster at the beginning of a relationship. Accordingly, on boarding well becomes even more paramount for virtual team building. A few key elements for remotely on boarding the team may include:

02: Avoid Cliché Icebreakers.

How often do we find ourselves asking “How was your weekend?” to break the ice before the start a meeting? Their answers to this question feel worn, tired, and un-engaging.

To shift the mood for the team and build affective trust, we will want our virtual team building to focus on non-cheesy icebreakers. Cheeky, enlivening icebreaker questions can reveal something new and intriguing about the person you might not have known before.

03: Have A Buddy System

An excellent way that remote companies can build affective trust is to build a buddy system as part of their virtual team building. In the team, here are two ideas we could try to put a buddy system into practice:

04: A Dedicated Channel For Non-Work Related Conversations:

A place for “watercooler chat” is a real requirement to building the affective trust a team needs to thrive. Some examples of non-work related chat channels may be:

1. “Good morning” chatter in the mornings when we hop online.
2. Having a  pets channel in Slack and asking everyone to share their pet pictures.
3. Questions to know each other better and to uncover unlikely connections.

05: Give Opportunities For Non-Work Related Video Chats:

Text Chat is nice… But there’s nothing like getting to see folks’ facial expressions and hear them laugh, when it comes to building affective trust. As a result, video chats would be a key part of how we do virtual team building.

One thing to be wary of if we decide to do this is that people may be severely burnt out on being on video meetings all day. They may not be eager to engage in yet another video meeting, even if the topic itself is fun.

Building of Cognitive Trust In Remote Teams

If affective trust is all about the “heart” – the emotional closeness and rapport someone feels – then cognitive trust is as all about the “head.” Cognitive trust stems from believing in the reliability and capabilities of someone else. Cognitive trust is quite easy to forget – and yet, it yields tremendous results. Studies have found how cognitive trust tends to have a stronger correlation with leadership effectiveness.

01: Willingness To Show Vulnerability As A Leader:

Being vulnerable and admitting our shortcomings as a leader aids to build trust. Vulnerability around our weaknesses and mistakes demonstrates empathy.  The more empathetic someone is, the more likely they were to trust them. To put this into practice, we can try saying something like:“I feel like the X project I’m overseeing is not going as well as I would like… might you have any advice?”

02: Make our Intentions Crystal Clear:

Making our intentions behind our actions clear is one of the most effective way to build trust. This means being open about why we are saying something, why decisions are made and why some decisions are not made. When we are opaque about why we are changing our mind or choosing to sit on something for a while, it destroys the trust someone has of us. For example, when we need to give someone tough feedback, if we make our intentions clear, they are most likely to trust and be open to hearing that feedback.

03: Walk The Walk-  Follow Through On Commitments:

This seems to be especially powerful. How clear are we demonstrating that we are following through on our commitments? During one-on-one (or) all-team meetings, try saying: “Based on the feedback, I’m changing X. How does that sound?”

What Is Psychological Safety?

Every person in every organization creates a psychological zone around them. This zone influences how those around them think and feel. Those that can increase feelings of safety can also significantly strengthen their team’s performance. A person’s ability to create psychological safety is a learnable skill. As one focuses on improving their emotional intelligence, their ability to influence their team and organization’s psychological safety will improve.

Psychological safety is a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. In psychologically safe groups, team members feel accepted and respected — safety increases when the four quadrants below thrive.

The Impact Of Psychological Safety

To enhance challenger safety, individuals in a group need to know that they are safe to express challenging ideas. A person who knows that they need to work on self-awareness could increase challenger safety by deliberately growing in awareness of stressful situations. For example, if individuals know they are working with someone they find challenging, they need to be mindful that they have a bias to remain open-minded.

Something as simple as taking the time to notice and name stressful emotions can yield real benefits. When one names a stressful feeling, that emotion becomes less intense. Naming a stressful emotion creates a distance from that emotion and allows an individual to relax intentionally.

At the heart of all this is building an awareness of one’s role in creating trust and psychological safety. Without intentionally creating new patterns, the brain will fall back on old patterns of behavior. It is up to individuals to decide to become a better version of themselves. Beneath the surface of wanting our team to “feel good” is a deeper desire for our teams to trust our intentions, and trust that we will act on them. If we can focus on building affective and cognitive trust – and not merely the vanity of how many people are showing up to a Zoom happy hour – our deepest desire for true team building can become a reality.

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa

BUILDING TRUST IN VIRTUAL/ REMOTE TEAMS: BEHAVIORS ASSOCIATED- Chapter 01

Now that our team isn’t working in the same office anymore, the things we used to say to each other in the hall – a simple “hello” in the mornings or a smile at someone as we walked by their desk – are absent. Gone are post-lunch catch-ups over coffee or asking about how a co-worker’s weekend was when we go to fill up our water bottle.

So what do we do? How do we bring back trust and cohesiveness in the team? Games and activities are charming, sure. But does it truly help build trust in a remote team? We have to dig deeper for more meaningful and more sustainable ways of building trust in a remote team.

What is a Virtual Team

“Virtual team” is an odd phrase. It sounds like something that only exists in a digital alternate reality. But virtual teams are very much a reality, and they’re becoming more prevalent with each passing day. A virtual team is no longer an outlier. Organizations have realized the benefit of using technology to look beyond their local community for talent. It’s almost become the norm—and of course, the whole virtual trend has been boosted by the recent pandemic. Regardless, it’s clear that virtual teams are here to stay. The first, and perhaps the highest, is understanding what virtual teams are and why they’ve gained such popularity so quickly.

A virtual team (also known as a geographically dispersed team, distributed team, or remote team) can also refer to groups or teams that work together asynchronously or across organizational levels. Powell, Piccoli and Ives (2004) define virtual teams as “groups of geographically, organizationally and/or time dispersed workers brought together by information and telecommunication technologies to accomplish one or more organizational tasks.  Virtual teams can be defined as “small temporary groups of geographically, organizationally and/or time dispersed knowledge workers who coordinate their work predominantly with electronic information and communication technologies in order to accomplish one or more organization tasks.”

What Is Virtual Team Building

One of the biggest misconceptions about virtual team building is that it’s only about helping our team “feel good.” Warm and fuzzy sentiments about each other on the team is unquestionable pleasant – but that does not mean we should optimize for them in a team. When a team is constantly looking to “feel good,” they end up flattering each other while avoiding to speak the truth. Conflict is brushed under the rug. Preserving face is valued over honesty and mutual accountability. The team’s culture – and performance – will suffer, as a result.

Rather, to get virtual team building right, we will want to focus on fostering trust in a remote team. Trust, after all, has enormous benefits to a team’s culture and performance that we often don’t fully recognize. Studies have found how trust is linked to improving job performance, increasing employee engagement, and opening up channels of communication. Trust is the oil in the engine that helps any team (remote or co-located) get to where it’s trying to go.

But trust can be a blanket word. Something we casually toss around, without precision. When we aspire to build trust, we can lose our sense of what that means to begin with.

To do virtual team building right, we must then distill specifically the type – or types – of trust we should be looking to cultivate.

What Exactly Is Trust?

Interpersonal trust and psychological safety can be conceptualized as mirror images of social interactions associated with individual, team, and organizational behaviour. Is it possible that when we interact with others and perceive that they’re capable, caring, ethical, and predictably consistent in their behaviour that some type of “switch” in the brain turns on to signify we should trust them and feel safe with others?

The Two Kinds of Trust That Come into Play

Virtual happy hours and team-building games at your monthly all-hands meetings are always fun and entertaining—but a monthly virtual gathering isn’t enough for building tight-knit relationships. Because social connection is about building trust, specifically two kinds:

Affective Trust

Affective trust is one type of trust that we really rely on as a team to be effective. It’s the kind of trust that is based on the feeling we have about someone that’s positive. It’s enormously important in a remote team because we don’t get that as much. In a remote setting, we often over-invest in excelling at our job and performing well (cognitive trust) vs. getting to know our colleagues (affective trust). Affective trust is needed most in the beginning of a new relationship.

The days of sharing our weekend plans in the break room or getting after-work drinks might not be as doable as they used to be, but we should still create space in our virtual work day to spark those conversations whether it’s through a Slack DM or a virtual coffee chat. Establishing a buddy system to help new hires get to know their teammates (and vice versa), or creating dedicated non-work channels in Slack or Teams for people to socialize (e.g. a pets channel for folks to share stories and photos about their furry family members) are also worth trying. 

Cognitive Trust

Cognitive trust is our belief in someone’s dependability and reliability. We build cognitive trust through our actions. It’s our ability to follow through on our word, show humility, and do what’s best for our team. To gauge how well we are building cognitive trust, we may ask ourselves:

Each time we show our competence, it’s like we are making little deposits in our team’s cognitive trust bank.

Bottom line: We need both affective and cognitive trust to cultivate connection.

***To be continued in Chapter 02 (Building of Affective Trust & Cognitive Trust in Remote Teams,  Psychological Safety in Teams, Its Importance) Link to Chapter -02:

BUILDING TRUST IN REMOTE TEAMS: BEHAVIORS ASSOCIATED – Chapter 02

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa

BEHAVIOURS THAT HELP LEADERS MANAGE A CRISIS

BEHAVIOURS THAT HELP LEADERS MANAGE A CRISIS

The roles and responsibilities of business leaders have dramatically changed in the past few weeks. Before COVID-19, leaders in high-growth companies were focused on fostering innovation, driving revenue, and gaining market share. Today, many of those same leaders must make rapid decisions about controlling costs and maintaining liquidity. They may encounter unforeseen roadblocks — supply chain issues, team shortages, and operational challenges — that drastically alter the scope of their roles and priorities.

All the while, they and their teams are navigating health and safety concerns, working remotely, and supporting their families through the pandemic. Those in charge will be tested in areas where they have not fully developed their leadership muscles, and the learning curve will be steep.  To move forward in a crisis, leaders need to cultivate some behaviours in themselves and their teams. They must decide with speed over precision, adapt boldly, reliably deliver, and engage for impact.

Behaviour 1: Decide with speed over precision.
The situation is changing by the day — even by the hour. The best leaders quickly process available information, rapidly determine what matters most, and make decisions with conviction. During a crisis, cognitive overload looms; information is incomplete, interests and priorities may clash, and emotions and anxieties run high. Analysis paralysis can easily result, exacerbated by the natural tendency of matrixed organizations to build consensus.

Leaders must break through the inertia to keep the organization trained on business continuity today while increasing the odds of mid- to long-term success by focusing on the few things that matter most. A simple, scalable framework for rapid decision-making is critical.

1. Define priorities. Identify and communicate the three to five most important ones. Early in the crisis, those might include employee safety and care, financial liquidity, customer care, and operational continuity. Document the issues identified, ensure that leadership is fully aligned with them, and make course corrections as events unfold.
2. Make smart trade-offs. What conflicts might arise among the priorities you have outlined? Between the urgent and the important? Between survival today and success tomorrow? Instead of thinking about all possibilities, the best leaders use their priorities as a scoring mechanism to force trade-offs.
3. Name the decision makers. In the central command “war room,” establish who owns what. Empower the front line to make decisions where possible, and clearly state what needs to be escalated, by when, and to whom. The default should be to push decisions downward, not up.
4. Embrace action, and don’t punish mistakes. Missteps will happen, but research indicates that failing to act is much worse.

Behaviour 2: Adapt boldly.
Strong leaders get ahead of changing circumstances. They seek input and information from diverse sources, are not afraid to admit what they don’t know, and bring in outside expertise when needed.

1. Decide what not to do. Put a hold on large initiatives and expenses, and ruthlessly prioritize. Publicize your “what not to do” choices.
2. Throw out yesterday’s playbook. The actions that previously drove results may no longer be relevant. The best leaders adjust quickly and develop new plans of attack.
3. Strengthen (or build) direct connections to the front line. In triage situations, it’s crucial to have an accurate, current picture of what is happening on the ground. One way is to create a network of local leaders and influencers who can speak with deep knowledge about the impact of the crisis and the sentiments of customers, suppliers, employees, and other stakeholders. Technology can bring the parties together.
4. Seek different perspectives. The successful crisis leader seeks out individuals who have a different perspective on an issue. They include individuals with whom they may not agree and whose advice may be contrary to that of their closest advisers. Effective leaders extend their antennae across all the ecosystems in which they operate.

Behaviour 3: Reliably deliver.
The best leaders take personal ownership in a crisis, even though many challenges and factors lie outside their control. They align team focus, establish new metrics to monitor performance, and create a culture of accountability.

1. Stay alert to and aligned on a daily dashboard of priorities. Leaders should succinctly document their top five priorities (on half a page or less) and ensure that those above them are in accord. Review performance against those items frequently — if not daily, perhaps weekly — and make sure that leaders share this information with direct reports. Review and update your “hit list” at the end of each day or week.
2. Set KPIs and other metrics to measure performance. Choose three to five metrics that matter most for the week, and have leaders regularly report back on each.
3. Calm, courageous and positive. They feel a sense of urgency and remain even tempered. They recognize that an organization, a country or the world is watching them and know that how they present themselves will provide non verbal signals to the audience. They will deliver bad news when they need to and do it in a way that avoids panic and provides a realistic level of hope for the future. Above all, they are courageous enough to make decisions they believe to be the right ones, regardless of whether they are the more popular ones.
4. Keep mind and body in fighting shape. To reliably deliver, leaders must maintain their equanimity even when others are losing their heads. Establish a routine of self-care: a healthy diet, exercise, meditation, or whatever works best for you. Stock up on energy, emotional reserves, and coping mechanisms.

Behaviour 4: Engage for impact.
In times of crisis, no job is more important than taking care of your team. Effective leaders are understanding of their team’s circumstances and distractions, but they find ways to engage and motivate, clearly and thoroughly communicating important new goals and information.

Leaders need to reiterate new priorities  frequently to ensure continued alignment in this time of constant and stressful change.

1. Connect with individual team members. Reach out daily for a “pulse check” with least five; block out time on the calendar to do this. Relate on a personal level first, and then focus on work.
2. Dig deep to engage your teams. When communication breaks down and leaders act without team input, as can more easily happen when work is remote, they get sub-par results. Good leaders are able to see the big picture. They can see all of the moving parts and understand what is cause and what is effect. They can dig deep into detail without being mired in it and quickly develop a very detailed knowledge of the issues. This ability further enhances their capacity to view the problem realistically.
3. Collaboration. The best leaders know they can’t do everything themselves. They understand, however, that a long-term solution requires the input and involvement of many stakeholders. They identify those individuals and work together towards a solution that most support and most can live with.
4. Ensure a focus on both customers and employees.
   1. To support customers: Reach out, but first do no harm. Track and document intel across your customer base. To strengthen relationships and build trust, keep the focus off yourself and explore how you can truly help your customers.
   1. To support employees: Lead with empathy and a focus on safety and health. Compassion goes a long way during turbulent times. Find ways to lend material aid to frontline employees who cannot work remotely.
5. Collect and amplify positive messages —successes, acts of kindness, obstacles that have been overcome. Many companies are tied to a noble purpose. Whatever your purpose, celebrate your daily (often unsung) heroes. Simply staying productive in these times is heroic.

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa

PRECISION, TRUENESS AND ACCURACY

Accuracy and Precision:

The words accuracy and precision are often used almost interchangeably in colloquial usage. However, when it comes to measurement system analysis their meaning, interpretation and usage is widely different. It is important to understand these characteristics since they form a part of a good measurement system.

Accuracy refers to the closeness of a measured value to a standard or known value.

Precision refers to the closeness of two or more measurements to each other.

A good analogy for understanding accuracy and precision is to imagine a basketball player shooting baskets. If the player shoots with accuracy, his aim will always take the ball close to or into the basket. If the player shoots with precision, his aim will always take the ball to the same location which may or may not be close to the basket. A good player will be both accurate and precise by shooting the ball the same way each time and each time making it in the basket.

The words precision, trueness and accuracy are important differentiated terms when referring to measurements in the scientific and technical context.  Generally speaking, accuracy refers to how close a measured value is in relation to a known value or standard. However, the International Organization for Standardization (International Standards Organisation – ISO) uses “trueness” for the above definition while keeping the word “accuracy” to refer to the combination of trueness and precision.

On the other hand, precision is related to how close several measurements of the same quantity are to each other. It is rather common to use the terms “bias” and “variability” to refer to the lack of “trueness” and the lack of “precision” respectively.

Precision is sometimes stratified into:

• Repeatability — the variation arising when all efforts are made to keep conditions constant by using the same instrument and operator, and repeating during a short time period; and
• Reproducibility — the variation arising using the same measurement process among different instruments and operators, and over longer time periods.

With regard to Accuracy we can distinguish:

• The difference between the mean of the measurements and the reference value, the bias. Establishing and correcting for bias is necessary for calibration.
• The combined effect of that and precision.

Four Possible States of a Measurement System

It is important to realise that when since accuracy and precision have different meanings in the context of measurement systems, there are 4 possible states that a measurement system can have in this regard. The measurement system under consideration maybe:

1. Both accurate and precise
2. Accurate but not precise
3. Precise but not accurate
4. Neither accurate nor precise

When accuracy and precision are present in the system together, it gives measurements that are close to the standard value and to each other. This is the desired state of affairs that every measurement system eventually works toward.

The ISO standard 5725, under the title “Accuracy (trueness and precision) of measurement methods and results”, uses the combination of two terms, “trueness” and “precision”, to describe the accuracy of a measurement method. According to ISO 5725, “Trueness” refers to the closeness of agreement between the arithmetic mean of a large number of test results and the true or accepted reference value. “Precision” refers to the closeness of agreement between different test results.

On the other hand, the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM) defines accuracy as the closeness of agreement between a measured quantity value and a true quantity value of a measurand (quantity intended to be measured). In this case, trueness is defined as the closeness of agreement between the average of an infinite number of replicate measured quantity values and a reference quantity value.

Tightly related to accuracy, trueness and precision, is the measurement error, also referred as an observational error. This error that can be quantified by different methods is defined as the difference between the “true” value and the measured value. The systematic part of the observational error is generally related to the trueness of the measurement while its random part is linked to precision.

Accuracy and precision in psychometrics and psychophysics

In psychometrics and psychophysics, the term accuracy is interchangeably used with validity and ‘constant error’, whereas ‘precision’ is a synonym for reliability and ‘variable error’ respectively. Validity of a measurement instrument or psychological test is established through experiment or correlation with behavior. Reliability is established with a variety of statistical technique (classically Cronbach’s alpha).

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa