Examples of Trust in Agile Teams

New to an Agile team? Start here. Building trust isn’t instant—but it’s not a mystery either. Here are 10 things Agile practitioners can do in a new organization to lay the groundwork for credibility and trust: ✅Listen deeply before offering solutions. Observe how the team works. Understand their context. Curiosity builds connection. ✅Honor what came before you. Even if things need to change, acknowledge the effort and decisions made. ✅Be consistent. Show up the same way every day—calm, curious, dependable. ✅Clarify your role. Don’t assume people know what an Agile Coach or Scrum Master actually does. Frame it simply. ✅Ask powerful questions. Instead of prescribing, invite reflection. (“What’s getting in our way?” > “You need a retrospective.”) ✅Celebrate small wins. A thank-you. A spotlight. A Slack shoutout. These build psychological safety. ✅Be visible, not invasive. Drop by standups. Walk the floor. Offer support—without micromanaging. ✅Start where they are. Don’t force a textbook framework. Co-create the next step together. ✅Be honest about what you don’t know. Humility builds more trust than expertise ever will. ✅Reflect often. Invite feedback. Adjust your approach. Model agility in how you lead. ⸻ 👣 Trust is earned by your posture, not just your process. Start small. Stay human. Keep showing up.

It was 10:47 PM when a manager’s phone buzzed. It was a message from one of the engineers: > “Hey, something’s broken in production. Can you jump on, please, and help me figure this out?” The manager had seen this play out before: late-night deployments, rushed merges, things slipping through. He could’ve responded with a lesson. > “Why so late?” > “Was this tested?” > “Did you follow the checklist?” But he didn’t. He joined the call. The engineer was already anxious. Logs open. Voice a little shaky. He needed support and to feel safe in those moments. So they fixed the issue. Rolled things back. Got production stable. It took 20 minutes. Before hanging up, the engineer said: > “Thanks for not being upset.” The manager didn’t say much. He just nodded. But in his mind, he knew this: The moment you make someone feel safe during failure, That’s the moment they start trusting you. The next day, the manager and the engineer had a long conversation… You know why the manager didn’t blow up at that moment because he had seen it over the years. Good engineers don’t just stay because of perks. They stay where they feel protected. Where mistakes aren’t punished before they’re solved. Where the leader shows up when it’s hard, not just when it’s convenient. That’s what builds trust. It’s vital that your team feels safe.

Your remote team's trust level isn't hidden in surveys or 1:1s. It's sitting right there in your Slack channels, waiting to be decoded. After many years of scaling scrappy startups to high-performing globally distributed organizations, I've learned to read between the digital lines of what teams won't say out loud. Here are the hidden trust indicators that never lie: 1. Digital Body Language Tells All ↳ High trust: Emojis in technical discussions, casual tone in serious threads ↳ Low trust: Formal emails for simple questions, "per my last message" frequency spikes ↳ Dead giveaway: When people write novels instead of just asking 2. Meeting Behavior Patterns ↳ High trust: "Camera off" needs no explanation, comfortable silence during thinking ↳ Low trust: Screenshot hoarding, parallel backchannel conversations ↳ Watch for: Who speaks up when things go sideways 3. The Ultimate Trust Test When did someone last share in a public channel: → An unfinished feature → A failed experiment → Bad news (before it became a crisis) The most revealing signal? How your team handles half-baked ideas. High-trust teams throw rough drafts into the wild. Low-trust teams polish everything to death. Trust isn't built in virtual happy hours. It's forged in those vulnerable moments of "here's my mess, help me fix it." Your turn: What unexpected trust signal have you spotted in your remote team? Drop it below. Your story might be the lightbulb moment another leader needs. #TechnicalLeadership #RemoteWork #Trust