Cultural differences or trust?

Often issues when working with an offshore operation are put down to cultural differences.  But I wonder how much of the issue is simply one of trust between co-workers?  When you work side by side with someone and have lots of regular face to face interaction, it’s easy to build up trust.  With trust comes the ability to give someone the benefit of the doubt.  If a deadline is missed but isn’t usually, the natural inclination is to assume something out of the ordinary must have happened.

Add distance and a different country to the equation and only occasional face to face time, and suddenly doubt enters the equation.  The temptation is to assume the worst and be pleasantly surprised when things go to plan and deadlines are met. Fundamentally, trust goes out of the window.

Yes cultural differences will mean that people go about things in different ways but if you are able to build trust and assume your co-workers are fundamentally good at their job and have their heart in the right place, then actually everything should be fine

I’m not saying that you naively assume everything is ok from the very beginning.  Trust has to be earned, but once it is, you are better off assuming that fundamentally you’ve got good people who do their best to do a good job more often than not. On the other side, remote team members should realize that trust should not be lost of easily given away and everything possible should be done to maintain it once it’s earned.

This then becomes self fulfilling and the foundation of a high performing remote team.