Building and Maintaining Trust in Virtual Teams

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to widespread adoption of virtual teams (VTs), the prevalence of which had already been increasing steadily. However, studies show that VTs often fail to meet their potential, highlighting the centrality of trust to their success. While trust is important at the team member level and the focus of much of the extant research, it also underpins effective virtual leadership. Following a review of VT and trust literatures, research conducted within three global technology companies across Europe, Middle East, and Africa is used to provide insights into trust development in virtual leader-member dyads. These highlight leaders' behaviours that can both demonstrate their own trustworthiness to VT members and their trust of VT members. These behaviours are integrated into a framework for enabling high trust VT leadership which emphasises member-centricity.