What is your advice for building trust virtually, especially in the first 90 days of a new role?

Great question! With a bit of extra effort, there are many things that can be done to forge relationships that build trust in a virtual environment. To do this successfully, invest time in getting to know your stakeholders and identify opportunities where you can add value and share your knowledge.

Whether it’s a 1:1 or a team happy hour, dedicate time every week to get to know your team members on a personal level and build rapport. I have found that establishing common ground and better understanding the people I frequently interact with creates a much easier and more productive working environment. Our team at Zendesk uses the Donut app for Slack to connect teammates on a regular basis. I would highly recommend this if your team is using Slack.

If you see a report or customer insight that is relevant to your product area - share it with your product manager. If you have a special skill (e.g. making great product demo videos), host a lunch and learn session with your product marketing team. Sharing your insights and expertise can make others more likely to consult you and demonstrate that you are credible.

During the first 90 days of any new role, I like to go on a listening tour. Identify your counterparts you'll be working with across the spectrum of the organization (everyone from finance to product) and ask them the same 3 questions. What you'll start to understand is where the answers differ and where there is an opportunity for alignment. By going on this listening tour you are first understanding where the organization is at, and where there are challenges and opportunities before coming in and changing anything.

The second thing I will do is to try and get a deep understanding of the numbers. For example, what does our sales funnel look like? How do we measure the adoption of features? What are the OKRs and how are we pacing? What are our customers saying? This enables you to have an informed and data-driven opinion.

Finally, a huge part of trust is building great rapport and relationships. Scheduling virtual coffee meetings, lunch and learns (if you're in an office) or just simply slacking and asking how their weekend was, is important to start knowing your teammates on a personal level.

Building trust is about being someone who genuinely cares about your teams' goals.

It's not just about being an exceptional executor and cross-functional collaborator, but also going the extra mile to understand teams' true motivations (in a good sense of the term). And eventually, help them achieve those goals!

One of the most important outcomes of stakeholder management is getting buy-in, and that comes easiest when there's trust. Getting buy-in is absolutely critical to moving projects forward, and the first 90 days is a great time to lay strong foundations. 

Here are the three actions I take very intentionally to build trust with my peers and cross-functional partners:

1. Ask questions and listen intently. The same way I approach different audiences with different positioning or messaging is the same way I approach building trust internally. It starts with showing a genuine interest in other people — putting them at the center of the interaction — and listening intently. This allows me to understand the lens through which they see the world, the company, and our product. I can meet them where they are.

Example: It's my first 90 days and I am making my rounds in getting to know the Sales team. I ask questions about our audience and how what they're hearing on their calls aligns to the slide decks and collateral. Are they using that collateral? Do they feel like it works? Why or why not? I demonstrate a genuine interest in how they show up to work and their day-to-day, so I can best put myself in their shoes.

I may learn from my conversations that they don't feel like they have input on the collateral created for them, it's not really useful, and they just build things on their own as a result. This gives me insight into them feeling unheard and a desire for closer collaboration on the things that directly impact how they do their job.

Let's say we start working on a new sales deck. I create a small consulting group of high-performing and influential sales folks to collaborate with (true story). Together, we come up with the idea for the deck to live within the new product we launched, passively demoing that new product while speaking to the broader platform. This approach satisfies the closer collaboration the team is seeking, produces a fantastic idea that supports our new narrative, and results in greater buy-in across the broader Sales team.

2. Create clear documentation. Don't expect people to read your mind. When I was at a previous employer, one of the things we would say is "clarity is kindess." I really believe that when you have the best interest of a stakeholder in mind, clarity is best. It sets expectations and empowers people with the knowlege and understanding to make decisions.

Example: I was running a big launch at a previous employer. There were lots of moving parts, and lots of stakeholders — including executives. It was really important that the folks executing on deliverables understood why they were creating what, and that the executives understood why we were making certain decisions around timelines and tradeoffs. This required very clear communication across documentation, Slack channels, etc. My approach was to create a comprehensive GTM plan that included the strategy and tactics (single source of truth) and separate project plans to manage the plethora of deliverables. The GTM plan included the thinking and why behind what we were doing, our goals, and how we would collectively achieve them. The projects plans included that thinking at the project level.

For executives, I ran GTM reviews. There I gave them insight into the strategy and where our efforts fell within the GTM funnel, so they could see the complementary relationships between each tactic. I also communicated go/no-go criteria for moving forward from a product readiness perspective, including what we were and were not optimizing for, and why we were or were not making certain tradeoffs. That clarity (and the confidence it exudes) helped me get their buy-in and move the launch forward as I saw best for the customer (even when it meant pushing back on their sense of urgency to fix bugs and conduct more beta testing).

3. Overcommunicate. This is especially essential in a virtual environment. It's definitely something I don't think I've mastered and continue to work on. Overcommunicating means communiting clearly, early, and often — which also requires a level of vulnerability. It means erring on the side of too much information. It's asking for help as soon as you need it, or sharing an idea when it's not quite buttoned up. 

Example: Within my first 90 days in my current role I laid out my plans through the end of the year. Part of that plan was cleaning house — creating structure, getting organized, and identifying missing parts. I knew it was important in positoning us to optimize for speed and execution. The challenge was, at a company level, people want to see marketing doing stuff — producing content, running experiments, etc. And, at the team level, people are wondering what (if anything) is going to change about their roles and responsibilities.

At both the leadership and team levels, I communicated my thinking, goals, and foresight as I was refining my plan — answering questions and implementing helpful feedback along the way. Overcommunicating brought them into the journey and being part of the story I was building with the plan also gave them greater understanding. Ultimately, resulting in buy-in.