Are you wondering how to trust someone if they are not in the office where you can see them?
My philosophy is to give trust first. A friend of mine once told me: “We become what other people tell us we are.” So, I have chosen to give trust first.
Whether you work remotely or not, in a group of fewer than 10 people (like our agency Flow SEO), you will know who is being productive and reaching their targets.
No, you can not know if someone is doing laundry during work time or visiting a doctor. But, why would you want to know this?
When it comes to task management, we focus on targets and tasks, not when or where someone is executing them.
What ruins trust for me, is when I feel left hanging. This is when I give a task with a deadline and then find myself in a client call without the deliverable. To avoid this, our policy is this: Every task and deadline can be moved (things are usually not that urgent in the world of SEO) but you have to let your account manager and client know a few days upfront.
What gains my trust first and foremost is one quality: Being proactive.
I love new ideas, creative solutions and taking ownership. So, everyone who is proactive is largely rewarded and allowed to pursue the activity they choose. Whether the backlink team wants to learn keyword research, our PR person wants to build our social channels or an SEO consultant wants to update all the templates — being proactive is the most desirable trait for Flow SEO.
This also means that perfectionism is not. I’d rather have mistakes (typos on social media posts, a weak backlink, an inelegant client call or a missed strategy document — all real examples) than people being afraid to try something new.
Don’t confuse this with the “go fast and break things mentality” of Silicon Valley startups. Generally speaking, Flow SEO stands for high-quality work. But, if things slip and break every now and then as we experiment, I am okay with that. It is more “go slow, experiment and take ownership for the results – no matter if they are good or not”.
Trust is a gift. And most people will live up to their potential and to become the trustworthy person that you see in them.
