Build trust with your team members

1. Follow our guidance about open and safe environments.
2. Recognize excellence and give credit consistently.
3. Identify opportunities for growth.
4. Prioritize autonomy.
5. Be transparent.
6. Intentionally and authentically build relationships.
7. Exercise: Team Dynamics deeper dive

Foster a safe and open environment

1. Demonstrate through your words and actions that you encourage and welcome all perspectives—even if they are not popular or easy to discuss, or they raise a conflict.
2. To encourage people to speak up, acknowledge your own vulnerability.
3. Listen, stop, and reflect, and be mindful of your body language.
4. Constructively approach conflict and difficult conversations.
5. Value and respect everyone’s contributions.
6. Show appreciation for various points of view and experiences.
7. Don’t encourage gossip.
8. Be mindful of workplace safety issues.
9. Tool: Value employees who lead internal initiatives

Prioritize an effective feedback culture

1. Emphasize the value of feedback.
2. Approach individual feedback constructively.
3. Approach team feedback constructively.
4. Show openness to employee input and suggestions.
5. Confront biases, and model openness to difficult feedback.
6. Constructively respond when you may have committed—or have been perceived to have committed—a dignity violation.

Create remote humanity in remote and distributed work

1. Be mindful of the equity and inclusion issues underlying remote work situations.
2. Strengthen the ties that bind your team.
3. Be mindful of the leadership nuances of managing remotely.
4. Recognize that dignity issues, bias, and harassment can affect remote work interactions.

Advance dignity in policy and organizational values

1. Be engaged with your organization’s commitment to inclusion and diversity.
2. Communicate about and model the behaviors that underlie workplace policies and initiatives that relate to dignity.
3. Lead by example when you witness dignity-violating behaviors.

Value team members’ differences

1. Double down on your relationships with mindfulness of difference.
2. Teach yourself about differences and reflect on your blind spots.
3. Build your own leadership capacity as an ally and advocate for dignity.
4. Be a proactive ally, and encourage your team members to follow suit.
5. Acknowledge the impact of external crises and trauma on different communities.

Welcome new team members thoughtfully

1. Focus on the onboarding and “ramp up” experience.
2. Prioritize inclusion, belonging, and organizational values.
3. Create effective ways to onboard new team members who will be working remotely.

Manage team meetings inclusively

1. Use team meetings to advance open discussion and create psychological safety.
2. Advance inclusion and trust during team meetings.
3. Employ dignity-advancing operational norms.

Strengthen synergies across teams

1. Actively work to expand your team’s network and your own (and encourage your team to do the same).
2. Share recognition, gratitude, and success stories.

Support career development

1. Be consistent, clear, and open when communicating about career goals and development.
2. Notice what factors affect how you assess people’s performance and career development.
3. Challenge the reasons for holding back a promotion or advancement decision.
4. Be flexible in your approach in times of crisis or external upheaval.