How do we begin to build trust in a work environment where interpersonal relationships are under duress? Working virtually during and after COVID-19 made it difficult to build trust between workers who had never met in person.
Trust is at the basis of all working relationships. Now we are communicating with people we never have met in person. Trust is being further undermined as employers push to replace employees with automated artificial intelligence (AI) substitutes. And establishing trust is even more challenging for those conducting work across cultures.
A GROWING DIVIDE
According to East-West Leadership founder Gabor Holch (gabor@eastwestleadership.com), weaker personal and professional relationships are a result of “pandemic-induced safety silos, and now we struggle with fears and biases triggered by geopolitics. Can we trust the other side? Will we be punished for making friends across barricades? Will politicians cut the ties we diligently create?”
These geopolitical strains began prior to COVID. I witnessed a growing divide between American and Chinese co-workers within several clients: Chinese employees working in the U.S. were not being allowed to socialize after work with their American colleagues; Chinese organizations were replacing Western employees with Chinese nationals; and many American companies were bringing their expats home due to perceived anti-American sentiment. The U.S. was creating restrictions on Chinese scholars who were coming to study or do research in America. Polarizing factors must be addressed or they will undermine even the best attempts to build trust.
How will leaders of training and development respond to the need to build trust when international travel is being replaced with virtual meetings, eliminating the chances for promoting understanding by visiting co-workers or clients on their own turf? You cannot “walk in someone else’s shoes” if you have not seen the world from their perspective. Generational factors also play a role in building trust.
According to Holch, “A new generation of managers grew into leadership expecting automated technology to replace personal contact. Older managers often are shamed online for ignorance about AI, but an equally scary gap is forming among young executives who struggle with communication in person.”
STRATEGIES TO CONSIDER
Here are some strategies to build and retain trust with colleagues and co-workers you have not met:
1. Learn about the person, not just their roles. Prepare an online group site of profiles (including photos and interests) of all team members. Profiles can include favorite hobbies, vacation spots, sports, music, movies, books, etc. This will allow for some initial bonding over common interests.
2. Reach out to your international colleagues with culturally appropriate holiday greetings. This will help build relationships beyond the usual urgent issues.
3. Have a cross-cultural communications specialist join you on initial calls. This will prevent misunderstandings and teach the team members areas where they need to seek clarification.
4. Ask the cross-cultural specialist to help design a plan for building trust for first time visits to another country. One of our clients sent a new VP to meet the company’s biggest client in China. Instead of consulting a cultural informant, the executive acted the same way they would have done in the U.S. At the first meeting, the visiting executive got right down to business and started to negotiate new terms with the client rather than spending the first meeting as an opportunity to build the new relationship. The Chinese client was offended by the perceived arrogance and decided they no longer wanted to retain the service supplier. This was a Big 5 consulting company, and the cost to it was in the millions of dollars, plus the reputational loss of their best client to a competing company.
Spending extra time and effort to build trusting relationships will be profitable for the organization and rewarding for teams. As a first step, new global virtual teams would be wise to start with a teambuilding program using a cross-cultural facilitator.
