Part 4: Trust Across Distance and Change

Imagine sending a question to a colleague working from home.

An hour passes. No reply. Their status shows “away.”

You start building a story. Perhaps they are taking a long lunch. Perhaps your request is not a priority. Perhaps working from home isn’t working quite as well as they claim.

Meanwhile, they may be concentrating on the report you asked them to finish, taking an agreed break, or assuming your question can wait until the afternoon.

The same uncertainty can arise with a colleague on another continent. Add time zones, local holidays, and different communication expectations, and there is even more room for interpretation.

Distance does not have to be international. Sometimes it is the few kilometers between an office and a kitchen table.

When you cannot see the work, what do you assume?

Start with reasonable trust—and clear agreements

Assume the best? Assume the worst? Suspend judgment until someone provides proof?

My starting point is reasonable trust, supported by clear agreements. Give people room to demonstrate reliability. Review relevant evidence. Adjust your judgment when there is a reason to do so.

This approach also asks something of the leader: explain what reliability looks like.

“Be available” is too vague. “Keep me informed” leaves plenty to interpretation. And “I trust you” does not explain which decisions someone can make independently.

As Area HR Manager for Voith Middle East, I worked across locations and coordinated personnel development between headquarters and the region. In the International Sales Engineer Program, I coordinated recruitment and learning across 14 countries, working with local managers, trainers, and specialist teams.

Those responsibilities required practical coordination: who owned the next step, what depended on it, and when a problem needed attention.

Research by Sirkka Jarvenpaa and Dorothy Leidner explored communication and trust in global virtual teams. Their study suggested that teams could develop early “swift” trust, but that it could be fragile. Although the study predates today’s collaboration platforms, it offers a useful foundation for thinking about reliance between colleagues with limited shared history. Communication and Trust in Global Virtual Teams

For everyday leadership, I would ask: What evidence of reliability can people see without needing to watch one another work?

Working time, contribution, and collaboration are different questions

An online status indicator tells you whether a system considers someone active. It tells you very little about the quality of their thinking.

But focusing on results alone leaves questions unanswered, too.

If someone delivers excellent work, that does not automatically resolve a discrepancy in their recorded hours. Equally, a complete time account does not establish that the work was effective.

I would separate three aspects:

What needs to be understood	What to discuss and review
Working time	Agreed schedules, accurate records, and how interruptions are handled
Contribution	Quality, progress, completed work, and obstacles
Collaboration	Availability, responsiveness, and reliable handovers

Time recording can be part of a dependable working relationship. Explain its purpose, what should be recorded, and how questions will be addressed. Apply comparable standards to people working in the office and at home.

The expectation should be understandable before someone is held accountable for it.

Investigate the gap before judging the person

Imagine a milestone has not progressed despite the hours recorded.

A useful opening might be:

“You recorded these hours, but the agreed milestone hasn’t moved forward. Help me understand what happened.”

Then listen.

Was the task blocked? Did another priority intervene? Was the estimate unrealistic? Does the employee need support? Is there a performance concern—or inaccurate reporting?

Those are different problems. They need different responses.

Respect means giving someone a fair opportunity to explain. Clarity means identifying the actual gap. Dependability means agreeing on a response and checking whether it works.

If a concern persists, address it directly with relevant evidence and proportionate oversight. Trust does not require overlooking a pattern. It requires a fair basis for interpreting it.

Agree on a working rhythm people can rely on

A distributed or hybrid team needs explicit agreements about response windows, handovers, urgent requests, and where decisions are recorded.

Distinguish acknowledging a request from resolving it. For example:

“Please acknowledge requests within one working day. If an answer will take longer, tell the sender when to expect it. Urgent operational issues go through our agreed channel.”

That is an example, not a universal response standard. The right arrangement depends on the work, schedules, and time zones.

Agree on when colleagues need to be reachable and when uninterrupted work is appropriate. Discuss breaks and boundaries openly. Constant availability should not become an unspoken test of commitment.

Trust runs both ways. Employees need to know that agreed flexibility will be honored—and that working from home will not quietly reduce their access to opportunities.

Make inclusion independent of location

A remote employee misses an informal office conversation. By the next call, a decision affecting their work has already been made.

Nobody intended to exclude them. They were excluded nevertheless.

Respect across distance requires access to the information and conversations people need.

Record decisions where everyone can find them.

Seek input before a decision closes. Rotate inconvenient meeting times when teams span time zones.

Leave room for personal connection without making attendance at every informal gathering a measure of belonging.

Results also need to be assessed in context. Quality, collaboration, ethical conduct, and sustainable workload matter. A colleague who repeatedly meets their own deadline by creating emergencies for others needs feedback about that impact.

Make progress visible through agreed milestones and useful reviews. Explain what those reviews are for and what support they can unlock.

Change creates another kind of distance

During an automotive change project at Capgemini Invent, I worked with colleagues on employee feedback and change communication. Our analysis identified gaps between what management communicated and what employees understood.

That distance can exist between people sitting in the same office.

During restructuring or AI adoption, a message about efficiency may leave someone wondering whether their role is at risk. An invitation to experiment may raise questions about workload, mistakes, or accountability.

Ask what employees understand the change to mean for their daily work. Respond to the concerns beneath their questions.

Explain what has been decided, what remains open, and what they can influence. If feedback changes the plan, show how. If it does not, explain why.

Make the next update dependable

You cannot always make the future predictable. You can give people a dependable way to stay informed.

Name who owns an unresolved question and when an update will arrive. Keep that date even if the final answer is still pending:

“The decision is not ready. Here is what has progressed, what remains unresolved, and when we will speak again.”

Before ending the conversation, ask:

“What do you need to keep working confidently until our next update?”

The answer may reveal a missing approval, a conflicting priority, or a concern your announcement never addressed.

Whether someone works across the world, from home, or beside you during a difficult transition, the standard remains the same: take their situation seriously, explain where they stand, and make the next commitment clear.

When you close the call or leave the room, do people know how to proceed—and what they can depend on you to do next?