Trust at a Distance by David Horsager 6 Strategies for Managing in Remote Workspaces
What's it about?
Trust at a Distance (2025) explores how as a leader, you can build and sustain trust with teams who work remotely, in hybrid setups, or across multiple locations. Drawing on research and real-world cases, it outlines six practical strategies you can use to strengthen communication, alignment, accountability, predictability, connection, and support so that dispersed employees stay engaged, confident, and effective.
Remote work isn’t a temporary experiment anymore. Your team might be scattered across cities or time zones, yet you’re still expected to hit targets, keep people engaged, and make good decisions. The upside is real: broader talent pools, less commuting, more flexibility, and clearer records of decisions and commitments. Done well, this way of working can make organizations stronger and more inclusive than a building ever did.
The hard part is trust. Heated arguments over home-based work, tense return-to-office demands, and doubts about who is “really working” all show how fragile trust can be at a distance. You and your team have fewer nonverbal cues, fewer casual check-ins, and more chances to fill gaps with private stories, suspicions, and guesswork. When trust is missing, everything slows down.
This lesson presents six strategies to remedy that. You’ll learn how to replace doubt with clarity, strengthen connections even when you’re not in the same room, and lead remote or hybrid teams in ways that feel fair, human, and dependable for everyone involved.
Imagine you’re leading a completely remote-working nonprofit. You care deeply about your team, so you tell them they can reach out anytime. Yet you rarely start conversations, you answer messages late, and you shy away from using new tools. Team meetings feel stiff, with long pauses and one person filling the space just to avoid silence. Real reactions spill out later in side chats and informal video calls without you. In that quiet, your people start asking themselves, “Is something wrong here? Am I safe here? Should I be looking elsewhere?”
In a dispersed team, trust rests on how deliberately you communicate. When you stay quiet or send vague messages, your team fills the blanks with worry and self-protection. You need communication that is intentional, frequent, and easy to understand. That is the essence of strategy 1: amplify communication.
The idea rests on six keys. Understanding means you add extra context and spell out both facts and feelings, instead of expecting people to sense urgency or emotion from a single word like “ASAP.” Respect focuses on your digital tone: the speed of your reply, the care in your wording, and whether you answer at all. These send powerful signals about how much you value someone.
Information means you push key updates beyond your immediate group so remote silos do not drift apart. Alignment calls for shared norms, like which tools fit which kinds of work, how fast people should respond, and what tone you expect.
Curiosity asks you to treat first impressions as hypotheses and seek real information through questions. And Grace invites you to pause before reacting, remember that you rarely see the full picture, and choose to give colleagues the benefit of the doubt. When you practice these six keys, you replace quiet suspicion with steady, trust-building communication.
One national organization that connected rising business leaders with senior figures in finance and entrepreneurship was facing trouble. Its mission sounded inspiring, yet people inside felt lost. Job responsibilities were hazy, several leaders issued direction, and staff didn’t know who had final authority or who could actually make personnel decisions.
When the CEO suddenly resigned, the scattered staff, who barely knew one another, were ready to walk away. An interim CEO stepped in, visited key volunteer groups, kept the virtual team in the loop, and then brought the whole staff together in person to build a shared vision, clarify roles and reporting lines, agree on priorities, and create regular spaces for questions. As clarity and connection increased, trust grew, and people put their résumés away.
When employees can’t see leaders in hallways or overhear what gets emphasis, they work in silos and guess what’s important. If you only explain direction once and move on, people fill the gaps with their own assumptions. So, you need to connect daily tasks to a bigger mission and spell out which results matter now. This is strategy 2: clarify direction.
One way to close the clarity gap is to lean on MVPs – your mission, values, and priorities. Mission is the why – the enduring reason your organization exists. Values are the way – the shared standards that guide decisions and behavior, even when no one is watching. And priorities are the how right now – the few focus areas that should shape where people spend their time and energy this week or this quarter, especially when they work at a distance.
To make your MVPs real, rely on four proven trust builders: conversations, repetition, stories, and goal alignment. Weave your MVPs into everyday talk when you review ideas, recognize wins, and choose what comes first. Repeat key messages in meetings, messages, and updates until they stick. Share stories of people living the mission and values so others can see what success looks like. And tie team and individual goals directly to your MVPs so no one has to guess why their work matters. When you can, get people into the same room to co-create or refresh the shared direction, giving remote staff a concrete experience of where you’re all heading together.
Think back to a time when everything in your workday felt new. You had to think through every email, every request, every unspoken rule. By evening, you were drained. This uncertainty can be a constant strain on remote employees if you don’t give them reliable patterns to count on. That’s why strategy 3 requires you to build predictability.
In a dispersed team, unpredictability isn’t just inconvenient, it drains energy and confidence. People can’t quietly watch how others behave, so they miss the subtle cues that explain what really matters. Instead, remote work can feel like moving through minefields. A casual joke that lands badly, a message that doesn’t mention someone’s title, or a playful emoji in the wrong context can all set off reactions you never saw coming. Without a clear roadmap of expectations, your team walks carefully, second-guessing themselves, which raises anxiety and lowers trust.
To reduce that cost, you need a simple, critical tool: consistent check-ins. When people don’t have predictable times to ask questions, they hold everything in and assume they’re on their own. Leaders sometimes lean on a “figure it out” mindset and feel they’re granting autonomy, but from the employee side it can feel like isolation. The same thing happens with the myth of the always-open door. In a virtual world there’s no door to glance at, so the default assumption is that you’re too busy. Unless you reach out first, many team members will only speak up when a problem has already exploded.
High-trust remote teams turn check-ins into a nonnegotiable habit built on three elements: time, consistency, and structure. You carve out regular time, even if it’s short. You protect those appointments instead of canceling them when things get busy. And you give each conversation a simple rhythm so it stays focused and useful. If you have room to go further, you can add predictable routines like quick start-of-week team huddles or brief end-of-day updates. When people know when they’ll hear from you and what those moments will feel like, they relax, share concerns earlier, and start to trust that they’re not facing things alone.
When COVID-19 suddenly pushed whole companies into remote and hybrid setups, a lot of leaders started asking themselves the same questions: Can I really trust people I can’t see? Do I need tighter control? Stories spread of bosses accusing teams of “fake working” and of employees secretly running more than one full-time job from the same home office. That tension between trust and control sits right at the heart of remote work.
Many organizations react to these questions with a kind of digital surveillance state – tracking mouse movement, logging keystrokes, grabbing random screenshots, or watching webcams to prove people are at their desks. On paper that promises certainty. In reality, it sends one loud message: you are not trusted. When people feel monitored instead of trusted, they stop caring, look for workarounds, and creativity shrinks. But strategy 4, redefine accountability, offers a different path.
Accountable autonomy flips the script. Instead of choosing between blind faith and strict control, you connect freedom to responsibility. People gain real say in how they structure their day and do their work, while results and commitments stay visible. That extra space can bring out the best in people. When no one is hovering, many are more willing to share ideas, take smart risks, and admit when something isn’t working. Motivation shifts from “my boss is watching” to “I want to do this well,” which lifts energy and performance.
The key is balance. Not every role allows the same level of flexibility, and not every person is equally prepared for it. Keep asking who is ready for more freedom and expand autonomy step by step as reliability is proven. That also means you, as a manager, have to loosen your grip. Leaders who grew up in micromanaged environments often default to tracking hours and activity. Letting go means focusing on outcomes instead.
To build strong accountability without sliding back into control, put four habits at the center: transparent measurement that focuses on results instead of screen time, clear expectations so no one is guessing what “good” looks like, consistent feedback so performance is discussable in real time, and appropriate consequences when commitments are repeatedly missed. In a dispersed team, that mix lets you hold a high bar while still treating adults like adults.
On a virtual training call in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, the author David Horsager faced a screen of mostly blank tiles. A group of nurses he was meeting with were exhausted, and clearly in no mood for business as usual. So he stopped his normal introduction and asked them to grab a scrap of paper and sketch how they felt. When the cameras finally came on, the screen filled with rough drawings of tired faces, heavy tears, and words like “empty” and “angry.” No one spoke for a moment, yet something shifted. Those nurses weren’t just attending a session; they felt seen, and a bit of trust returned.
That moment captures the big risk in remote work: isolation. Isolation has been rising for years, and reports now link ongoing loneliness to serious health risks, especially for people who work away from colleagues all day.
Our fifth strategy, creating connections, involves treating connection as part of the job, not a bonus. It starts with paying attention. Remote employees often assume their manager is too busy for them, especially when they multitask in meetings, end calls abruptly, or let messages linger. On the other hand, when their manager shows up fully, listens for what isn’t said, and responds with real focus, people feel respected instead of sidelined.
Next comes sharing. It’s not necessary to spill everything, yet letting your team see a bit of your real life and your imperfect moments makes you human. Thoughtful self-disclosure creates psychological safety. The third piece in creating connections is cultivating community: building small, regular chances to laugh, swap stories, and work through challenges together.
But watch the balance. If you never create space for people to chat, learn each other’s quirks, and solve problems together, your team may look efficient but stay brittle when pressure rises. On the other hand, if cliques, gossip, or quiet bullying creep into chats and side calls, that same sense of community turns into a dark side, so confront the threat directly, mix people across groups, and reset what’s acceptable.
Finally, if you see employees stretching work into every corner of their day, model clear work hours and encourage real downtime so remote life doesn’t slide into constant exhaustion.
Jake joined a big technology firm just as it shifted to hybrid work. On paper he looked ideal: strong skills, an impressive portfolio, and a great interview. A few months in, his manager saw a different story. Jake hit deadlines but rarely went beyond them. He sat through meetings and hardly spoke. When asked how things were going, he finally admitted he felt he was doing “okay,” but had no idea what great looked like in this company. Working from home, he had missed the informal learning that shows new hires how top performers operate.
That gap between expectations and support sits at the center of strategy 6: equip your people. In remote settings, competence doesn’t grow by osmosis. You need to equip your team in three ways: focused training, real career development, and tools that truly help. When people feel prepared instead of left to guess, they stop settling for “good enough” and aim higher.
Training starts with core skills for distance work: confidence with video calls, shared task platforms, team messaging, and basic security. It also covers time management, self-discipline, virtual communication, and leading from afar. Because there’s less chance to learn by watching others, lean on live sessions, mentoring, and simple tutorials so people can ask questions in real time.
Career development matters as much as training. Remote staff often wonder if leaders see them, especially when promotions seem to go to people in the office more often. Here social capital comes in – the web of relationships that opens doors to information, chances, and advancement. You can help people build it in four ways: connect them beyond their own team, give them visible roles so their work is noticed, make room for their voices in hybrid meetings, and back them with mentors and sponsors who coach them and speak up for them when roles or projects are decided.
Tools then turn support into daily reality. Good project management software can clarify who is doing what and how each task fits the whole, as long as keeping it updated doesn’t take more effort than the work itself. Video platforms can connect people but also exhaust them, so keep meetings purposeful and leave space between calls. Chat channels can speed help and build rapport, but without clear purposes and norms they quickly turn into noisy threads where important details get buried.
Finally, hardware matters. A remote teammate trying to work from a bed with an aging laptop receives a clear message: no one plans to support you. A standard setup – reliable computer, headset, camera, and a healthy workspace – tells people something very different: you expect excellence and you’re willing to invest so they can deliver it.
In this lesson to Trust at a Distance by David Horsager & Peggy Kendall, you’ve seen that remote and hybrid work are here to stay and trust is the factor that makes distance either efficient or exhausting.
Six strategies can help you build that trust: amplify communication, clarify direction, build predictability, create connections, redefine accountability, and equip your people. Together, these help you turn scattered efforts into clear expectations, steady support, and genuine ownership so your dispersed team can perform with confidence.
Trust at a Distance (2025) explores how as a leader, you can build and sustain trust with teams who work remotely, in hybrid setups, or across multiple locations. Drawing on research and real-world cases, it outlines six practical strategies you can use to strengthen communication, alignment, accountability, predictability, connection, and support so that dispersed employees stay engaged, confident, and effective.
Remote work isn’t a temporary experiment anymore. Your team might be scattered across cities or time zones, yet you’re still expected to hit targets, keep people engaged, and make good decisions. The upside is real: broader talent pools, less commuting, more flexibility, and clearer records of decisions and commitments. Done well, this way of working can make organizations stronger and more inclusive than a building ever did.
The hard part is trust. Heated arguments over home-based work, tense return-to-office demands, and doubts about who is “really working” all show how fragile trust can be at a distance. You and your team have fewer nonverbal cues, fewer casual check-ins, and more chances to fill gaps with private stories, suspicions, and guesswork. When trust is missing, everything slows down.
This lesson presents six strategies to remedy that. You’ll learn how to replace doubt with clarity, strengthen connections even when you’re not in the same room, and lead remote or hybrid teams in ways that feel fair, human, and dependable for everyone involved.
Imagine you’re leading a completely remote-working nonprofit. You care deeply about your team, so you tell them they can reach out anytime. Yet you rarely start conversations, you answer messages late, and you shy away from using new tools. Team meetings feel stiff, with long pauses and one person filling the space just to avoid silence. Real reactions spill out later in side chats and informal video calls without you. In that quiet, your people start asking themselves, “Is something wrong here? Am I safe here? Should I be looking elsewhere?”
In a dispersed team, trust rests on how deliberately you communicate. When you stay quiet or send vague messages, your team fills the blanks with worry and self-protection. You need communication that is intentional, frequent, and easy to understand. That is the essence of strategy 1: amplify communication.
The idea rests on six keys. Understanding means you add extra context and spell out both facts and feelings, instead of expecting people to sense urgency or emotion from a single word like “ASAP.” Respect focuses on your digital tone: the speed of your reply, the care in your wording, and whether you answer at all. These send powerful signals about how much you value someone.
Information means you push key updates beyond your immediate group so remote silos do not drift apart. Alignment calls for shared norms, like which tools fit which kinds of work, how fast people should respond, and what tone you expect.
Curiosity asks you to treat first impressions as hypotheses and seek real information through questions. And Grace invites you to pause before reacting, remember that you rarely see the full picture, and choose to give colleagues the benefit of the doubt. When you practice these six keys, you replace quiet suspicion with steady, trust-building communication.
One national organization that connected rising business leaders with senior figures in finance and entrepreneurship was facing trouble. Its mission sounded inspiring, yet people inside felt lost. Job responsibilities were hazy, several leaders issued direction, and staff didn’t know who had final authority or who could actually make personnel decisions.
When the CEO suddenly resigned, the scattered staff, who barely knew one another, were ready to walk away. An interim CEO stepped in, visited key volunteer groups, kept the virtual team in the loop, and then brought the whole staff together in person to build a shared vision, clarify roles and reporting lines, agree on priorities, and create regular spaces for questions. As clarity and connection increased, trust grew, and people put their résumés away.
When employees can’t see leaders in hallways or overhear what gets emphasis, they work in silos and guess what’s important. If you only explain direction once and move on, people fill the gaps with their own assumptions. So, you need to connect daily tasks to a bigger mission and spell out which results matter now. This is strategy 2: clarify direction.
One way to close the clarity gap is to lean on MVPs – your mission, values, and priorities. Mission is the why – the enduring reason your organization exists. Values are the way – the shared standards that guide decisions and behavior, even when no one is watching. And priorities are the how right now – the few focus areas that should shape where people spend their time and energy this week or this quarter, especially when they work at a distance.
To make your MVPs real, rely on four proven trust builders: conversations, repetition, stories, and goal alignment. Weave your MVPs into everyday talk when you review ideas, recognize wins, and choose what comes first. Repeat key messages in meetings, messages, and updates until they stick. Share stories of people living the mission and values so others can see what success looks like. And tie team and individual goals directly to your MVPs so no one has to guess why their work matters. When you can, get people into the same room to co-create or refresh the shared direction, giving remote staff a concrete experience of where you’re all heading together.
Think back to a time when everything in your workday felt new. You had to think through every email, every request, every unspoken rule. By evening, you were drained. This uncertainty can be a constant strain on remote employees if you don’t give them reliable patterns to count on. That’s why strategy 3 requires you to build predictability.
In a dispersed team, unpredictability isn’t just inconvenient, it drains energy and confidence. People can’t quietly watch how others behave, so they miss the subtle cues that explain what really matters. Instead, remote work can feel like moving through minefields. A casual joke that lands badly, a message that doesn’t mention someone’s title, or a playful emoji in the wrong context can all set off reactions you never saw coming. Without a clear roadmap of expectations, your team walks carefully, second-guessing themselves, which raises anxiety and lowers trust.
To reduce that cost, you need a simple, critical tool: consistent check-ins. When people don’t have predictable times to ask questions, they hold everything in and assume they’re on their own. Leaders sometimes lean on a “figure it out” mindset and feel they’re granting autonomy, but from the employee side it can feel like isolation. The same thing happens with the myth of the always-open door. In a virtual world there’s no door to glance at, so the default assumption is that you’re too busy. Unless you reach out first, many team members will only speak up when a problem has already exploded.
High-trust remote teams turn check-ins into a nonnegotiable habit built on three elements: time, consistency, and structure. You carve out regular time, even if it’s short. You protect those appointments instead of canceling them when things get busy. And you give each conversation a simple rhythm so it stays focused and useful. If you have room to go further, you can add predictable routines like quick start-of-week team huddles or brief end-of-day updates. When people know when they’ll hear from you and what those moments will feel like, they relax, share concerns earlier, and start to trust that they’re not facing things alone.
When COVID-19 suddenly pushed whole companies into remote and hybrid setups, a lot of leaders started asking themselves the same questions: Can I really trust people I can’t see? Do I need tighter control? Stories spread of bosses accusing teams of “fake working” and of employees secretly running more than one full-time job from the same home office. That tension between trust and control sits right at the heart of remote work.
Many organizations react to these questions with a kind of digital surveillance state – tracking mouse movement, logging keystrokes, grabbing random screenshots, or watching webcams to prove people are at their desks. On paper that promises certainty. In reality, it sends one loud message: you are not trusted. When people feel monitored instead of trusted, they stop caring, look for workarounds, and creativity shrinks. But strategy 4, redefine accountability, offers a different path.
Accountable autonomy flips the script. Instead of choosing between blind faith and strict control, you connect freedom to responsibility. People gain real say in how they structure their day and do their work, while results and commitments stay visible. That extra space can bring out the best in people. When no one is hovering, many are more willing to share ideas, take smart risks, and admit when something isn’t working. Motivation shifts from “my boss is watching” to “I want to do this well,” which lifts energy and performance.
The key is balance. Not every role allows the same level of flexibility, and not every person is equally prepared for it. Keep asking who is ready for more freedom and expand autonomy step by step as reliability is proven. That also means you, as a manager, have to loosen your grip. Leaders who grew up in micromanaged environments often default to tracking hours and activity. Letting go means focusing on outcomes instead.
To build strong accountability without sliding back into control, put four habits at the center: transparent measurement that focuses on results instead of screen time, clear expectations so no one is guessing what “good” looks like, consistent feedback so performance is discussable in real time, and appropriate consequences when commitments are repeatedly missed. In a dispersed team, that mix lets you hold a high bar while still treating adults like adults.
On a virtual training call in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, the author David Horsager faced a screen of mostly blank tiles. A group of nurses he was meeting with were exhausted, and clearly in no mood for business as usual. So he stopped his normal introduction and asked them to grab a scrap of paper and sketch how they felt. When the cameras finally came on, the screen filled with rough drawings of tired faces, heavy tears, and words like “empty” and “angry.” No one spoke for a moment, yet something shifted. Those nurses weren’t just attending a session; they felt seen, and a bit of trust returned.
That moment captures the big risk in remote work: isolation. Isolation has been rising for years, and reports now link ongoing loneliness to serious health risks, especially for people who work away from colleagues all day.
Our fifth strategy, creating connections, involves treating connection as part of the job, not a bonus. It starts with paying attention. Remote employees often assume their manager is too busy for them, especially when they multitask in meetings, end calls abruptly, or let messages linger. On the other hand, when their manager shows up fully, listens for what isn’t said, and responds with real focus, people feel respected instead of sidelined.
Next comes sharing. It’s not necessary to spill everything, yet letting your team see a bit of your real life and your imperfect moments makes you human. Thoughtful self-disclosure creates psychological safety. The third piece in creating connections is cultivating community: building small, regular chances to laugh, swap stories, and work through challenges together.
But watch the balance. If you never create space for people to chat, learn each other’s quirks, and solve problems together, your team may look efficient but stay brittle when pressure rises. On the other hand, if cliques, gossip, or quiet bullying creep into chats and side calls, that same sense of community turns into a dark side, so confront the threat directly, mix people across groups, and reset what’s acceptable.
Finally, if you see employees stretching work into every corner of their day, model clear work hours and encourage real downtime so remote life doesn’t slide into constant exhaustion.
Jake joined a big technology firm just as it shifted to hybrid work. On paper he looked ideal: strong skills, an impressive portfolio, and a great interview. A few months in, his manager saw a different story. Jake hit deadlines but rarely went beyond them. He sat through meetings and hardly spoke. When asked how things were going, he finally admitted he felt he was doing “okay,” but had no idea what great looked like in this company. Working from home, he had missed the informal learning that shows new hires how top performers operate.
That gap between expectations and support sits at the center of strategy 6: equip your people. In remote settings, competence doesn’t grow by osmosis. You need to equip your team in three ways: focused training, real career development, and tools that truly help. When people feel prepared instead of left to guess, they stop settling for “good enough” and aim higher.
Training starts with core skills for distance work: confidence with video calls, shared task platforms, team messaging, and basic security. It also covers time management, self-discipline, virtual communication, and leading from afar. Because there’s less chance to learn by watching others, lean on live sessions, mentoring, and simple tutorials so people can ask questions in real time.
Career development matters as much as training. Remote staff often wonder if leaders see them, especially when promotions seem to go to people in the office more often. Here social capital comes in – the web of relationships that opens doors to information, chances, and advancement. You can help people build it in four ways: connect them beyond their own team, give them visible roles so their work is noticed, make room for their voices in hybrid meetings, and back them with mentors and sponsors who coach them and speak up for them when roles or projects are decided.
Tools then turn support into daily reality. Good project management software can clarify who is doing what and how each task fits the whole, as long as keeping it updated doesn’t take more effort than the work itself. Video platforms can connect people but also exhaust them, so keep meetings purposeful and leave space between calls. Chat channels can speed help and build rapport, but without clear purposes and norms they quickly turn into noisy threads where important details get buried.
Finally, hardware matters. A remote teammate trying to work from a bed with an aging laptop receives a clear message: no one plans to support you. A standard setup – reliable computer, headset, camera, and a healthy workspace – tells people something very different: you expect excellence and you’re willing to invest so they can deliver it.
In this lesson to Trust at a Distance by David Horsager & Peggy Kendall, you’ve seen that remote and hybrid work are here to stay and trust is the factor that makes distance either efficient or exhausting.
Six strategies can help you build that trust: amplify communication, clarify direction, build predictability, create connections, redefine accountability, and equip your people. Together, these help you turn scattered efforts into clear expectations, steady support, and genuine ownership so your dispersed team can perform with confidence.
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