12 Tips For Leading a Remote Team

The future of work is both near and far. It is near because things are changing right before your eyes, but it is far away because that is where the remote workers are. Not only do more people work from home, they also spend more time outside the office. While many employers agree that remote workers tend to be more productive, the surprising news is how much more. A two-year study recently concluded that remote workers experience a productivity boost equivalent to a full extra day of work.

While it sounds innovative and motivating to be part of a team in a remote location, the reality is that it can be difficult to manage remote teams in a way that keeps them coordinated and ready for action. I am fortunate to work with an extremely smart, dedicated team that happens to be spread across the planet. From this experience, I have learned some valuable lessons in terms of best practices for non-local cooperation and insights into the future of work.

Although remote workers tend to be more engaged in their work, they need to work harder on the most basic things like communication.

The following tips have helped our remote working team become more productive and better coordinated:

Have a plan for Synchronous vs. Asynchronous message transmission: Synchronous refers to channels such as telephone, video calls and face-to-face meetings. Asynchronous includes email, slack, text, messenger apps, and anything where you can compose a response before you click Send. If your team doesn't know which messages belong in which channel, you end up wasting far too much time with irrelevant conference calls, endless email chains, and suffer from notification fatigue. Our Sync vs. Async decision tree deserves its own blog, but the most important thing is the process of finding out what works for your team. Do not neglect this important step.

Assume good intentions: This is closely related to the point above. Emails can be crazy because there are no contextual clues like tone of voice, inflection, body language, etc. People tend to interpret messages differently depending on their mood or what they think about the author. Train your team to assume good intentions with each message. Since my team assumes my positive attitude, I don't need to add smiley faces and exclamation marks to soften the tone of compact messages. This saves us a lot of time and allows us all to focus on what is really important.

Manage expectations: Do this with your team, especially when you work with vendors. Make sure your team is familiar with lead times, communication protocols and any other constraints or costs associated with scope. The result is that your team has a crystal clear understanding of vendors' capabilities and can manage their operational expectations accordingly.

Stick to a routine: Consistency in meeting deadlines is extremely important. If you are dealing with complex schedules across time zones, an interruption to the schedule will create chaos. Gain consensus on a regular cadence of meeting times and ensure that team members treat this as a priority. Most remote workers are free spirits who value independence. It's important to help them realize that regular meeting times are the basis for playing respectfully with others, handling rare requests for exceptions, and achieving greater productivity for all.

Video, video, video: I feel like this is my most important tip. We need video calls for every meeting. Meetings should be in a quiet place with high-speed Wi-Fi and earplugs. When team members appear professional, it means less distraction and less time wasted, while building a good relationship and increasing productivity. It shows respect for your clients and other team members if you show that you value their time and give them the professional courtesy they deserve.

Hold spontaneous video calls: If you find an email thread that goes back and forth more than three times, remove yourself from the email. Add the item to an upcoming agenda for discussion or make an impromptu video request to Slack. Practice live radical openness during these calls. Ask specific questions and give real feedback. Team members can't grow unless you challenge them directly while proving that you care about them personally. Radical openness requires courage, skill and compassion, but it is absolutely necessary for managing remote teams. A quick video call can save the entire project.

No agenda, no meeting: My team knows that every meeting - even the daily stand-ups - comes prepared with an agenda. Select a moderator and timekeeper in advance and assign someone to document the next steps. In remote teams, it is too easy for staff to make assumptions or gloss over key points. The result of documenting actions, deadlines, obstacles and individual responsibility is transparency and accountability.

Explaining the "why" is a long way: The hardest part of working from home is feeling excluded and forgotten. Remote workers often miss the events that lead to a particular decision or strategy. As their supervisor, I now make it an essential part of my process to make sure that they know the "why" of what I am asking of them. I take a step back before I respond or give instructions, and direct the team member towards the goal. This has helped more sensitive employees to better understand the business case for asking a question or raising a flag and prevents them from immediately going on the defensive.

Take time for feedback 1:1s Obtaining feedback from direct reporters is easy to postpone, but the culture can quickly wither away if you don't create regular opportunities for feedback and course correction. Be careful not to let these calls slip into tactical work. The result is that you hear directly about concerns or fears that might otherwise fly under the managers' radar, especially from employees who are more shy or introverted.

Get to the bottom of the root cause: If something goes wrong, don't just assume that someone has dropped the ball and is pointing their finger at it. We start with the "Five Whys", a 10 minute exercise that can be done individually or as a team. You may learn that a business problem needs to be addressed or that an employee has an area for personal growth. The positive results of finding the root cause of a problem are impressive. Rather than simply finding a scapegoat when things go wrong, answering the five reasons helps the team understand that you are concerned about both business goals and personal development.

Help them pull the plug completely when they are on vacation: In our company, we enable employees to prepare in advance for their leave of absence and temporarily hand over all responsibilities so that they can really let go and relax during their vacation. Each task is temporarily delegated to another team member. As part of the handover, the holidaymaker will have a short discussion with everyone who will be replacing him or her. Powers of attorney, schedules and other points are then documented in a common protocol, which everyone can access to find out who to contact. As a result, the work continues like a well-oiled machine while the team member is absent, and everyone gets the time they need with a clear conscience.

Remove the remote control from time to time: Although the business world has become quite comfortable with the idea of remote working, the power of spending time together, face to face, should not be underestimated. We host "team onsites" instead of offsites, and we treat it like a trip back to the 1980s: the whole team steps away from technology and indulges in a kind of human-to-human interaction. There are so many positive results when you gather in a common physical space. It helps plan a long-term strategy, boosts morale, builds relationships and brings new people into the team. We have learned that individuals who do not adapt well to the presence of the team on site rarely fit well with our company in the long run.

Working as part of a remote team is sexy in theory, but it takes real commitment from the entire team to learn to work in a different, sometimes uncomfortable way. But that's where the learning takes place. I can't say I've understood everything, but the above hard-earned lessons have greatly improved both our efficiency and team cohesion.

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