Posted by Riva Gianluca on December 04, 2001 at 13:24:01:

In Reply to: Trust issues within Groups posted by Andrew Alexander on November 11, 2001 at 05:26:44:

hi, we had a little argument above, but I'm going to show you I can speak about practical things (even if I'm a new-christian born).
Well, the point is how to build trust when there isn't. Trust is not a simple issue, there are several questions and definitions, I can give you my references if you like. You don't build trust from nothing. It's an ongoing process wich starts with a series of exchanges. you start giving no-strategical resouces (for example information not very valuable) to check the behaviour of your counterpart. As the exchanges are successful, you begin to develop real trust, to exchange valuable resouces. Trust begins relational, like friendship. What a company can do it's evaluate trusting behaviors of the employees (a peer-evaluation can be useful)
2) It's more complicated to develop trust in virtual groups. Trust needs some amount of face-to-face interaction (there the simple saying "trust needs touch"). There are some case-studies (if you're interested write to me and I'll give you the references) showing it's possible to develop a swift trust in virtual teams, if you:
a) Fix some language rules (for example what's the amount of silence? Some groups decided silence equals yes and not I don't care
b)fix some behavioral rules (for example to say in advance you can't use your PC for somedays
c) Try to make virtual communication a little more human: successful groups exchanged for examples stories about what they had done during weekends or holydays
d)Don't forget that basically Face-to-face interaction and computer mediated communication are different kinds of communication. They should complement each other rather than contrast.
hope Helps!
Bye for now

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