604: How Remote Teams Build Belonging, with Gustavo Razzetti

Gustavo Razzetti: Remote Not Distant

Gustavo Razzetti is the CEO and founder of Fearless Culture, a culture design consultancy that helps teams do the best work of their lives. For more than 20 years, he has helped leaders from Fortune 500s, startups, nonprofits, and everything in between. He is also the creator of the Culture Design Canvas, a framework used by thousands of teams and organizations across the world to map, assess, and design their culture.

In addition to his consulting work, Gustavo regularly speaks with leaders and teams about culture change, teamwork, and hybrid workplaces. He is the author of four books on culture change. His most recent book is Remote Not Distant: Design a Company Culture That Will Help You Thrive in a Hybrid Workplace*.

In this conversation, Gustavo and I explore the critical nature of trust for building belonging on hybrid and remote teams. We examine the principles of psychological safety and how this matters just as much in digital collaboration. Perhaps most importantly, we look at several tactics to open up trust that will help us pave the ways towards team belonging.

Key Points

• Hybrid work environments have the potential to be the best of both words, but in some places it is now worse.
• Trust is between individuals. Psychological safety is about how safe we feel with a team.
• It’s helpful to think of building psychological safety like climbing a ladder. Ironically, the higher you go on the ladder, the safer you feel taking risks.
• Welcoming questions such as “What’s your superpower?” and “What’s your kryptonite?” can be useful starting points for building trust.
• Metaphors are often a powerful way to entire into more complex, emotional discussion without feeling unsafe.

Resources Mentioned

• Remote Not Distant: Design a Company Culture That Will Help You Thrive in a Hybrid Workplace* by Gustavo Razzetti

Interview Notes

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Related Episodes

• How to Create Team Guidelines, with Susan Gerke (episode 192)
• How to Build Psychological Safety, with Amy Edmondson (episode 404)
• How to Engage Remote Teams, with Tsedal Neeley (episode 537)

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