How to Succeed Leading a Team of Remote Teams
Slowly but surely the world is saying goodbye to traditional forms of work. The idea of a fixed 40-hour work week, long commutes and rigid schedules is becoming stale to many people, especially as the internet gives them the freedom to work as they please. Generally speaking, employers are grasping onto this trend, with the amount of work being done at home growing by over 115 percent over the last decade.
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There are lots of other reasons why people are switching to remote work. Study after study has found including more flexibility into jobs helps improve worker efficiency and productivity, helping to boost morale and employee engagement. Yet there is still some pushback from management and leadership as stigmas associated with remote work hold strong, especially among people from older generations.
However, this begs the question as to how much of this comes from using the wrong approach to managing remote teams work? This is a very different way of performing work, so managing these teams would obviously require a different strategy. Some of the core elements are the same; for example, good leaders always employ empathy wherever necessary. But many of the tactics you would use to manage in the office won’t work as well with remote workers as they usually do with office team members. Consider these strategies for making telecommuting employees a valuable part of your company.
Deadlines are the king
Deadlines are obviously important no matter how your teams are set up. But, they take on a new role when you are managing remote employees. By allowing people to determine their own schedules and to work when they see fit, you are basically giving them free rein to decide their day.
However, work still needs to get done, so it’s important you emphasize on deadlines. Give people enough time to complete tasks, but then make sure they know how important it is they do so by the time you asked for it.
And, it’s important you follow through with a consequence if people do start to miss deadlines. If you are dealing with contractors or freelancers, there really isn’t much of a reason to give them more than one or two breaks when missing a deadline. A warning should be followed by termination. Relaxing your standards will only make things worse as you go along.
If you’re dealing with your own employees, though, you need to be a little more flexible. The most drastic step you could take is to revoke the privilege of working remotely, but stern reminders and communication should prevent you from getting to this point. A lot of companies ask for a mix, meaning employees work from home for two or three days a week and are in the office the rest of the time. This keeps engagement up and helps maintain focus on deadlines. However, if this isn’t possible, consider the next step.
Constant yet hands-off communication
Just because you aren’t seeing people on a daily basis, it doesn’t mean you can’t stay in touch. There are countless productivity tools out there that allow you to share files, chat and do almost everything else you would do in the office, ProofHub being one of them.
However, you’ll need to tailor your communication specifically to remote workers. While Managing-by-Walking-Around is an effective habit when you’re in the office, it can quickly become annoying and feel like micromanaging to remote workers.
For example, as a leader, you may stop by your team members’ desk as you walk around the office, checking in to see how things are going and asking how they are doing. This seems totally harmless, and is often seen an effective tactic for staying connected with your team as they go about their work independently.
But if you were to apply this same strategy to remote teams, you would basically be sending them messages three or four times a day asking them how they’re doing. Seems excessive, right?
When dealing with remote teams productivity, you need to turn the responsibility for checking in over to the employee. With remote work comes a certain expectation of autonomy, and constantly checking in will make people feel like you don’t trust them or are worried they can’t do the job successfully. The better way is to be hands off and to make yourself available to answer any questions.
It’s important to note, though, that this doesn’t mean you give an assignment and then ignore people until the deadline. Break the work up into milestones, or schedule some meetings so that you can get updates on what people are working on. This will be your chance to make sure everything is on track and to redirect people when you see they are drifting away from where the project is expected to go.
The amount of communication that goes on when leading remote teams isn’t necessarily less, but it does take a different form as the communication is not face-to-face. Be mindful of these things and adjust your management tactics appropriately.
Process optimization
To figure out how to run smoothly, sometimes it’s helpful to look at what makes it valuable. Not everyone considers selling their business, but building it up so that it could be sold is a good way to make sure it runs smoothly. One of the ways to do this is by defining, outlining and optimizing processes.
When dealing with remote workers, you are adding in a lot of employee autonomy and accountability. People will be less likely to reach out for smaller questions, and they will, therefore, be more likely to get things done in the way that makes sense for them. However, this isn’t always the best way, or the most time-efficient one.
The answer to this is to come up with some clearly defined processes. Whether they are for smaller tasks, such as filling out timesheets or expense reports, or for bigger tasks, having outlines for how to get things done and keeping them as a resource for remote workers is a great way to maximize their efforts.
People can’t just run down the hall and ask a question and no one wants to leave a number of messages asking how to do things, so if you have a platform where people can go to figure out the solution to what they are working on, you’re boosting their independence and efficiency.
And you can turn this effort into a collaborative process. During a regular meeting with your remote team, you can ask them if there is anything they feel they are spending too much time on, or if there’s a need to have a defined process, and using that information to come up with something that works for all.
Having these policies in place helps eliminate wasted time, allowing remote workers to spend more of that focused energy that comes from increased independence on core tasks to support the business, not the menial and mundane stuff that eats away the day.
Wrapping up
As you’ve probably learned by now, one of the most important leadership traits you can have is adaptability. Recognizing the uniqueness of each situation and developing a strategy for getting the job done is the key to a leader’s success. So, if you’ve just started working in or handling a remote team, or have been doing so for a while and feel like things need to improve, consider implementing some of these strategies so that your remote teams can become a valuable asset for your business.
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About the author: Jock is the owner and founder of Digital Exits, an online brokerage service. Jock and his team specialize in the buying, selling and appraisal of online businesses. Both through his current work and in his previous ventures, he has made use of remote teams and considers them a valuable asset for nearly every modern business.
