How Do We Build Trust in the Digital Age?

Isaac Stern, the famous violinist, said, music is what happens between the notes. Well, trust is what's built between the meetings. It's the conversation walking into the conference room. It's the continued conversation when you walk out of the conference room. It's the stopping somebody in the hallway and be like, oh, I meant to tell you, or knocking on someone's door and saying, you want to grab lunch, you want to grab a coffee, and all of these seemingly innocuous little things. No one of them does it. But over the course of time, relationships and trust start to build. The problem with a virtual environment is we don't have between the meetings. We just have the meetings. There is no before and after. There is no knocking on someone's door. There's no spontaneity. And so what we have to do is create those things artificially. We actually have to force those interactions to happen. So one of the things we do on our team is we do a Monday morning huddle. Huddle is a little bit of time for people to talk about what's on your heart and mind. And then we answer some either funny or poignant question that the huddle leader poses. There is no discussion of work. Zero. And so we spend 45 minutes to an hour on the phone with a team, and there is no discussion of numbers or projects or responsibilities, Nothing. It's just an opportunity for the team to come together and start to see each other as people. They talk about what they did with their kids. I didn't even know they had kids. You start to learn about who they are. So I think you have to force those things. One of the things we've also seen.

Success with is people turning their computers on, turning on Zoom together, and just working. They don't have to work together just to have a face there in the corner of the screen where you're working or having lunch together or having a coffee together. So you have to artificially create these things. It's not great. I mean, in person is always better, but it actually can work. It actually does create elements of humanity and trust that you need to build virtually.