8.2.1 Trust

As with conventional teams, the building and maintenance of trust between members is vital.

Ways to facilitate the building up of trust include:

• initial face-to-face start ups (with team-building activities) periodic face-to-face meetings
• visits to each other’s workplaces
• establishing clear codes of conduct and ground rules
• recognising and publicly rewarding performance
• taking care with the tone and language used in emails to reduce the risk of being misunderstood
• ensuring that team roles are made clear to everybody
• discussing and clarifying team goals
• making use of conference calls for in-depth discussions.