How do you lead a remote team?

The key is to measure results. Too many leaders micromanage which kills morale and growth. Make sure you’re clearly communicating the expectations regarding what results are needed. It’s also essential that you’re available to support your team when needed.

One thing I have found extremely useful based on my experience is having clarity in roles & goals; which needs to be communicated from the very beginning. Generation Z doesn’t like to be micromanaged; so if they have been given certain objectives with deadlines, they work well!

Every remote team (and in-person team) should have a mission and vision statement, along with quarterly priorities, goals, milestones/objectives. The easiest way to ensure you create and sustain a culture and results you need is to build as much as you can into a standard process and expectations.

From my experience, there are many factors to consider with moving your organization or team to a remote model. I know there are some instances where a business may have no choice. However, if there is time to plan, then I recommend that you take every minute to plan. Beyond setting goals and establishing roles, I would strongly recommend that staff be provided training that addresses how to be effective in the new work environment. There are a number of existing training opportunities that can support this recommendation. In addition, to providing the foundation for your staff it will be important that managers receive training on how to manage remotely. Many organizations opt to only address their line workers which can lead to problems.

Spending time to clarify goals and roles at the start of every project t is critical. As is being precise about the decision making chain. Independent working conditions can leave team members feeling leaderless when they cannot get decision when they need it.

When you are in-person, you regularly walk by your co-workers (usually) about 2-3 times a day. At least once in the morning, once mid-day, and then at the end of the day. Outside of meetings, try to at least hit 2 of these "communication" points with your team and key stakeholders.

Communication is critical to any team's success; however, outlining how and when you expect the communication is critical. This should be done at the onset since employees may choose to use a communication or tool that is preferred by them versus what the employer expects or requires. Along with outlining the tools, it is important to provide training that supports the employee being successful in their respective roles.

Absolutely communication is the key ingredient for success of any team - physical or remote! But too much micro- managing is not appreciated by the employees; the fact that they can be reached out by phone anytime & anywhere should be respected by the employers. For managing remote teams in an efficient manner employers should follow time management procedures. Employees should be given freedom & not feel that their privacy is invaded.

I’d add that you should set expectations around communications norms. For example, should emails be answered within 1 business day and Slack messages be responded to within 1/2 a day? Aligning on expectations will remove a lot anxieties that can be compounded when people are not in person.

Err on the side of inclusivity in communications and allow team members to opt out if they feel they are not essential to a discussion. Identify clearly who must be in the loop. It is easy to quickly scan a team communication and mute the zoom or pass over the email.

Even though team members are not physically co-located, it is important to create a sense of community and belonging. This can be done by scheduling regular team-building activities, virtual coffee breaks, team lunch/dinner, and recognition events, which allow team members to connect with each other, as well as form deeper and more meaningful relationships.

One I have found helpful is that as a manager of a remote team it is very important to showcase the work you team does to the rest of the company. You should be the ambassador of your team and find ways for them to feel appreciated and supported. One option here is to ensure in one of the company wide (or Department level) all-hands your team can present their work so that the rest of the company knows them and the impact they have.

Good points above. Just sending a chat message without any agenda other than to say hello, goes a long way…like you’re just checking in.

From my experience, trust is a key ingredient when establishing a remote work environment. Both the employer and employee have to be committed to establishing and maintaining trust; otherwise, it can lead to many challenges. Some ways that employers or clients that I've worked with in the past have accomplished this is by creating culture leads/champions. These individuals have an established rapport with their colleagues and are better able to assist managers and leadership with strengthening communication and building a rapport across the board.

Trust can be as simple as, engaging, showing you care, and following up on what you say you will. In the remote environment, people just need to know they can rely on you and what to expect.

It seems self evident that if your team is made up of people with the skills knowledge and attitudes that you wanted when you selected them why would you not grant a level of autonomy and decision making within the structure of the project.

Autonomy is not binary - yes or no. It exists on a continuum from task to process to outcome autonomy. As a remote manager, sometimes we can miss non-verbal cues or the cultural context in which a team member is operating. It is essential to have a regular 1-1 rhythm to openly discuss what support the team member needs and agree the degree of autonomy that’s appropriate. What is appropriate? For a manager, if you are comfortable with the level of autonomy and there are no surprises, you have not given enough space to your team member. Newer members may need more coaching and mentoring support, experienced talent in a role they know well might need more opportunities to put their own ideas into action.

Learning is impossible without experimenting and mistakes are an expected part of the learning journey. Learning happens when ideas are tested and the learner reflects on the results. For remote managers, it is critical to create a sense of psychological safety to foster learning. A few ways are for the leader to share own learning journeys and mistakes, create space in a 1-1 or team meeting to ask ‘what went wrong this week? What did we learn from it?’, set up new projects to include a learning path and to reward those who take personal risk to share missteps by affirming the decision to act before moving to a discussion on mitigation.

I would add that it is crucial to encourage team members to find and test leading edge developments within their field and to apply lateral thinking from the disciplines and experiences that they bring to the table.

Learning and development is another opportunity to increase engagement in a remote environment. The main problem is utilization of L&D benefits tend to be low and the same employees that tend to already be engaged. Make sure that any offering is oriented towards the broader employee base and that they will actually use it or that it relates to their actual role/day to day job.

Take time for all to learn how to shape the work experience. Do not try to duplicate the office and office behaviors. They are mostly unhelpful.

This is a tech recommendation that’s often overlooked: asynchronous video messaging. Asynchronous video empowers remote teams to interact visually when email or chat isn’t enough and at a date/time of convenience (i.e. across multiple time zones). Loom has long been known for this, but Zoom recently introduced a similar feature called “Zoom Clips.” Also consider Slack, Miro, Google Docs, Discord and Fellow. My personal favorite is VideoAsk for its robust and versatile feature set. And, all of these platforms are accessible and affordable for any size business. Remote work is here to stay, keep your team more engaged, productive, creative and collaborative through asynchronous video messaging.

Leading remote teams isn’t radically different than running other teams. The same principles apply. You’ll need to do all fundamental things you learn in management 101. However, there are some unique differences. One is you will have to be radically more intentional about everything. Remote teams exacerbate all the vulnerabilities of running an effective team. Take your eye off the ball and things will drop faster and harder. While that may feel overwhelming, it will make you better leader in the end since you’ll be actively doing what you should be doing anyway. Also, you’ll need to be open to diversifying your skill set. While many of the underlying skills of leading a team are the same, the way you execute them will be different.

Helpful organizational systems: Work, Structure, Information, Talent, Leadership, Incentives, Adaptation, and Alignment for distributed workforce are different from those of collocated and even hybrid work environments. A work on hybrid. In the 1990s, hoteling (a hybrid model) ran into similar issues. It was addressed with the then, and mostly now, Diagnostic to Prescriptive process of making hoteling the same as collocated. Wrong! remote and hybrid, like hoteling, are Adaptive Challenges, not Technical Challenges. This challenge requires mindset change first, technology application, then behavior engineering in the flow of work.