Trust at Scale: What High-Performing Global Teams Get Right

Distributed development can unlock speed and innovation, but only if trust holds the team together. Without it, distance remains a liability instead of an advantage.

When that trust is strong, teams move faster and with less friction. “What matters most is having each other’s backs," says Mario Propper, vice president of experiences at X-Team. "That means being able to ask for help, offer feedback, or bring in a teammate who might have a valuable perspective. We see individual wins as the result of collective effort. When the team succeeds, it lifts everyone.”

Building trust at a distance takes deliberate habits: clear communication, psychological safety, cultural curiosity, and outcome-based accountability.

Why Trust Is Critical for Global Teams

The impact of trust isn’t abstract. It shows up in every aspect of the work. 

• Faster Execution: Teams that trust each other spend less time second-guessing and more time shipping quality work.
• Greater Resilience: Trust cushions the impact of change, helping teams adapt to shifting priorities without breaking momentum.
• Higher Engagement: When people feel trusted, they invest more energy and creativity, reducing turnover and burnout.
  
  

How to Build a High-Trust Culture in a Remote Dev Team

Building trust in a remote development team never happens by chance. It takes deliberate action.

Use Clarity to Build Trust

Distributed teams don’t break because of distance. They break when expectations aren’t clear.

When people aren’t sure what decisions were made, what’s expected of them, or how to reach alignment, trust erodes. Small miscommunications become blockers. Missed context slows momentum. In a global, asynchronous environment, ambiguity compounds quickly.

“Trust travels fastest through clarity,” says Elika Dadsetan, CEO and executive director at VISIONS, Inc. “Teams that co-create behavioral norms, name communication preferences, and align on how decisions get made build resilience, especially across borders.”

Those practices can show up in regular async updates, project-specific Slack channels, and well-scoped onboarding guides. Clarity doesn’t just improve output. It reinforces a deeper message: You can trust your teammates to communicate with care.

Establish Psychological Safety

Trust can’t grow where people don’t feel safe to speak.

In distributed teams, where most collaboration happens through written messages and across time zones, psychological safety doesn’t just appear. Without the benefit of in-person cues, silence can feel like judgment. People hesitate to ask questions. They hold back feedback or stay quiet when things go wrong. That kind of uncertainty can stall progress as much as any technical issue.

The strongest remote teams recognize this and build structures that make openness feel safe. Regular one-on-ones, async check-ins, and onboarding processes focused on building relationships help people feel supported from the start.

“Frequent sync-ups, chats, and calls allow me and my team to make sure that everyone knows what they’re doing, has all the details they need, and if they’re stuck, they get help right away,” says Małgorzata (Gosia) Jezierska, X-Team product director.

Safety is reinforced when leaders show up with honesty and consistency. Vinod Goje, an applied AI expert who works in a global bank, explains: “I make it a point to be transparent about my own uncertainties or mistakes, which encourages others to do the same. We rely heavily on asynchronous check-ins or written notes—so everyone feels heard, even if they’re offline.”

Small moments of honesty, consistent feedback loops, and space to reflect all help reinforce a sense of safety inside teams. The strongest remote teams don’t avoid friction. They surface it early, talk about it openly, and resolve it quickly. 

Create Rhythm and Belonging with Rituals

Rituals are how remote teams stay human. They bring consistency to scattered schedules, create shared experiences, and build relationships beyond tasks. When crafted with care, rituals reduce isolation and help people feel part of something—especially important when in-person time is rare.

According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2025 report, 27% of fully remote employees experience daily loneliness. Rituals are one of the simplest and most effective tools for reducing that .

Darian Shimy, CEO at FutureFund, a fundraising platform for schools, said that approach works well for them, in the form of brief, async weekly updates where everyone shares wins, blockers, and personal highlights. “I found that it builds consistent rhythm and allows team members to be seen beyond just code limits. We also prioritize real-time ‘face time’ early in the relationship—even if it’s just casual 1:1s—to humanize remote interactions and break down initial barriers.”

Those rituals don’t have to be focused on work, notes Rossana Gonzalez, a people and culture manager at X-Team. “At the end of each month, we host a virtual get-together just to unwind, whether it’s playing online games, doing virtual escape rooms, or simply enjoying fun activities to get to know each other better. We talk about everything except work.”

These moments help people get comfortable asking for help, celebrating progress, and decompressing as a group. Over time, that builds a rhythm of trust.

Navigate Cultural Nuance With Curiosity

When you bring together developers from different countries, backgrounds, and communication styles, differences will show up. That’s not a problem to solve. Rather, it’s an opportunity to build something stronger.

Vaibhav Sathe, a managing director at Deloitte, recalls a moment when cultural nuance created unexpected barriers around gender and seniority. “These were not issues of intent, but of cultural conditioning, language confidence, and unfamiliarity with diverse workspaces.”

The result was a breakdown in communication and trust. Sathe’s solution: low-stakes social interaction. “Remote icebreakers, happy hours, even virtual games,” he adds. “Once people learn the person behind the face, it leads to improved collaboration and better trust.”

Eduardo Chapola, recruiting manager at X-Team, sees it as a chance to grow together. “I take the time to support my teammates, research about their culture, build trustworthy and respectful bonds, and learn with them.”

Jonathan Monsalve, employee engagement specialist at X-Team, emphasizes the role of communication in sustaining that trust over time: “Using active listening and encouraging open dialogue creates a culture where people feel heard and understood, reducing friction caused by differing cultural expectations.”

Cultural diversity won’t always feel seamless. But with the right habits and a shared sense of purpose, it becomes one of a global team’s greatest advantages.

Align on Outcomes, Not Schedules

In distributed teams, lost time doesn’t always look like downtime; it looks like silence. Waiting on approvals. Searching for missing context. Wondering who’s responsible for what. All of it chips away at trust.

According to Cortex’s State of Developer Productivity report, 26% of engineering leaders cited “waiting on approvals” and “gathering context” as the top two productivity leaks. These are signals of broken communication and unclear expectations.

When managing remote teams, the fix isn’t necessarily more meetings, but rather more meaningful meetings. “We balance transparency and alignment through a mix of strategic meetings and async collaboration,” Propper says. “We hold one general sync to keep everyone informed, and topic-specific meetings only when necessary, usually to kick off or wrap up projects. Everything else happens asynchronously on Slack.”

That approach ensures people know when to check in and when to keep moving. It reduces noise without sacrificing connection.

Set the Tone at the Top

Trust doesn’t scale on its own. It starts with how leaders show up, especially in remote teams where most signals are subtle and most influence is indirect.

“There’s always room for each team member to bring new ideas to the table,” says Gonzalez of X-Team. “We constantly encourage innovation and creativity based on the feedback we receive.” Leadership for her means listening actively, creating space for input, and treating feedback as a foundation for growth.

That openness has to be modeled from the top, says Jonathan Ortiz, vice president of recruitment at X-Team. “We also lead with curiosity, asking instead of assuming, and normalize open communication across time zones and cultures. Clarity, empathy are key for us.”

That tone ripples outward. It shapes how feedback is given, how blockers are surfaced, and how team members treat one another when things get tough. It creates a culture where people feel trusted—and where they trust in return.

When leaders show up with empathy and honesty, they give others permission to do the same.

Trust Powers High-Performing Global Dev Teams

Tools evolve. Processes change. But trust keeps distributed teams moving forward, even when everything else shifts.

The most successful global dev teams face the same challenges as everyone else. What sets them apart is how they respond through steady communication and a shared commitment to learning and adapting.

At X-Team, we’ve spent years building that kind of culture. If you’re growing a global dev team and want to create an environment where people feel connected, aligned, and ready to deliver, let’s talk.