Speaker 1: Hi there, Casper here with another Big Bold Bite, Bite Size Chunks of Wisdom. Right, I want to talk about building trust, and in particular in the context of remote teams, because I was reminded of this with a headline that I saw this week with this business where the leader is basically saying, I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots. I don't know about you, but that just screamed out that there's not a huge amount of trust going on in that business. And it took me back to one of the expeditions I had sailing around the world when we were deep in the Southern Ocean, and unless you're trusting the team of people that you're with, literally your life is in their hands. You're not going to go up and do sail changes on the front of the boat in these hundred foot waves and all that sort of stuff. And there's such a polar opposite between that and the previous story with the guy taking screenshots. So I was thinking, what would be a practical thing to share around this? And if I go back right to the definition for me of what a team is, a team simply is a group of people who trust each other, right? And if there is no trust, there is no team. It's just that's just people who are co-working. They're not really a team together. So how do you build that trust? In my experience, it starts with listening. And everybody is having their own unique experience of what's going on in the world. And there's no way you can guess what that is. The only way you're going to find that out is by asking the questions, seeing how people are listening to both what's being said and what's not being said, and then playing that back and just checking and making sure you've really understood what's going on. And when you do that, that for me is the foundation of trust building. I know in the past when I've worked in teams and I've been reporting to somebody else, when someone really feels they're listening to me, that builds my trust and confidence that we've got a good team that's going on there. I think that one of the things that's important in the world right now is this whole thing about micro touchpoints. And that's one of the things that's missed in the office environment. Those two or three minute conversations in the corridor or over a coffee, we're just not having that in a virtual world, right? It ends up being 15 or 30 minute Zoom or Teams conversations. So how can you build those micro touchpoints back in, whether that's just like a text, whether it's a quick call just to say hi and just check in. It's just those little points rather than the big ones, rather than just being isolated on our own. And it's important as well to recognise that we all have different preferences. I heard some research this week that many people are spending over half their time staring at Zoom and Teams screens. And so for me, it's finding the channels which respond with each individual person, what's people's personal preference, and just tuning into their world, because some people are very uncomfortable in front of the camera. And some people prefer phone calls, texts, whatever it is. But finding that right method for each person, I think is important. So and then it's understanding what are the things that actually build trust within your team, knowing what those are, and equally knowing what are the things that erode trust, because there may be many things that you're doing, which will actually erode trust, such as taking screenshots of your staff, right? That does not demonstrate trust in your team. And fundamentally, right, I always encourage people, the title of my book, Be More Human, right? What would a human being do in this instance? What would you do if it's someone like literally in front of you? How do you build trust with them? How do you get really present to what's going on? And what's their experience of the world that's going on right now? So look, so those are my thoughts, just to sort of share a few ideas around how do you build trust in this virtual environment? Love to hear what you think. Please do comment below, and look forward to sharing some more thoughts with you in the future. Take care, everyone.