Building trust in virtual teams starts with expecting good intentions. Kelly Gardner shares her approach to fostering collaboration in distributed technical teams.
Virtual teams, time zones, and cross-cultural collaboration define today's project management landscape. But how do you build genuine trust when your team has never met in person? Kelly Gardner, who has spent decades managing distributed technical teams, approaches this challenge with a surprising philosophy: start by expecting good intentions.
"Building trust and cohesion within a team means being clear about roles and responsibilities," Gardner explains. Her approach focuses on three key elements:
This framework creates what Gardner calls "open and honest communications" that help teams learn from each other's experiences while staying focused on success.
Quick Win: Schedule a team session specifically to establish and document ground rules for participation that everyone can support, even if they don't fully agree.
While many PMs start with project charters, Gardner takes a different approach. "I usually skip charters and go right to a project management plan," she shares. "Because a PMP contains the charter basics, plus the additional components to give your team the best chance at success."
This comprehensive approach helps teams align on:
Quick Win: Use your project management plan as a living document. When conflicts arise, reference it to maintain alignment and update it together as needed.
In distributed teams, knowledge sharing becomes crucial. Gardner's solution? "No one does anything alone," she emphasizes. Her team operates on a paired programming concept—not just for coding, but for all critical tasks.
"Single points of failure are not acceptable," she notes. "This means that no one person will hold the keys to any knowledge, tool, or process." This approach creates natural mentorship opportunities, pairing senior experts with less experienced team members who often challenge norms through their questions. Both sides grow from the exchange—senior members gain fresh perspectives while newer team members build expertise, enhancing everyone's leadership capabilities.
Quick Win: Map out your team's critical knowledge areas and ensure at least two people are proficient in each.
Remote work blurs traditional boundaries between personal and professional life. "Walking a line between personal and professional is not black and white and may be uncomfortable at times," Gardner acknowledges. "Understanding the differences individuals bring to a team makes the foundation we build holistic and often more successful."
Her solution? Conscious decision-making. Drawing inspiration from Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink," Gardner emphasizes thoughtful engagement over reactive responses. "We are not mirror images of each other," she notes. "We are all unique and worth the effort to help each other be successful."
Quick Win: Create space for open dialogue while keeping responses work-focused – acknowledge personal contexts when shared, but maintain professional alignment in responses.
Success in distributed team leadership comes down to three things: clear expectations, shared knowledge, and intentional relationship building. But perhaps most importantly, as Gardner has learned, it means "starting with expecting good intent from the entire team."
When you build from this foundation of trust, even the most challenging projects become opportunities for team growth and connection – no matter how many miles separate you.
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