Being a manager is already difficult. The transition to fully remote teams in recent years has most likely made your job even more difficult. Leading remote teams is difficult and requires different skills than managing in-person teams. However, with practice and the right tools, you can effectively manage a remote team.
Use the tips and tools listed below to engage and manage remote teams in order to build a strong company culture and an even stronger team.
What Are the Difficulties of Leading Remote Teams?
Before you can strategize solutions, you must first understand the challenges you are currently facing or may face in the future. (And some of them you might not even realize you’re dealing with.) As a manager, your attention is frequently divided. As your team is dispersed across the globe, your focus becomes even more divided with remote teams. Smaller things, like spontaneous hallway meetings or catching up at the water cooler, become more difficult, and it may become more difficult to maintain personal relationships with your employees.
Without a centralized office and meeting space, it can be difficult to keep track of tasks, deadlines, and productivity. When teams are no longer in the same location, there is an inherent communication barrier. It may be difficult to gauge and maintain team morale if you do not see your employees’ faces and body language on a daily basis.
If you’re leading a remote team for the first time, you’ll need to consider things like what are the best ways to manage remote workers? Of course, depending on your team, additional questions will arise. On top of that, it is your responsibility to foster a culture of strong teamwork, so you will need to figure out how to facilitate team building remotely.
Though these challenges may appear daunting, there are numerous advantages to working with remote teams (like having meetings in sweatpants). But, seriously, it appears that remote work is here to stay, and with some planning, there are many ways to successfully lead remote teams.
How Do You Lead a Remote Team Meeting?
When you have a global team, the seemingly simple act of scheduling a meeting becomes more difficult when time zones are taken into account. (You don’t want anyone waking up in the middle of the night to discuss strategy!) It’s critical to be strategic about meetings once you’ve figured out the scheduling. Nobody wants to leave a meeting feeling like they squandered their time. Meetings that are overscheduled may give the impression that time is being squandered. Too many meetings may also prevent your employees from getting their work done. On the other hand, too few meetings may result in a drop in productivity and communication, and people may feel disconnected. Every team will have different requirements, so don’t be afraid to ask your team about a good meeting rhythm.
Once you’ve sorted that out, it’s time to make your meetings count and equip yourself with the tools you need to engage your team. In addition to the regular meeting agenda, set aside some time at the beginning or end of the meeting for small talk. Begin with an icebreaker or a chance for everyone to share how they’re doing or feeling. Of course, with a meeting of dozens of people, this may not be possible, so you can check in with everyone using a poll, text chat, or another method that may work better. Regular meetings will necessitate the use of a stable and dependable video meeting platform. Make sure your meeting platform can create the types of meetings that your employees will want to attend and that will keep them engaged.
Because assembling remote teams requires an investment of time and resources, it’s critical to get down to business quickly and finish by the deadline. In addition to honoring productivity, your employees will understand that you value their time, which is an important aspect of being a good leader when leading remote teams.
Tools to Assist You in Remotely Managing Your Team
The right tools make any job easier. Fill your virtual toolbox with tools for messaging, project management, storage, and more to help your team succeed.
Messaging tools: In addition to email, you’ll need a way for your employees to contact you for quick questions. Slack, for example, allows everyone to message each other instantly. To keep things organized, in addition to one-on-one direct messages and group messages, you can also create channels for different conversation topics.
Project management tools: It is critical to use project management tools such as Trello or Asana to keep everyone on the same page. These tools ensure that everyone is aware of upcoming deadlines. You can also delegate smaller tasks within the project to different people so that everyone is aware of their responsibilities.
Storage and collaboration tools: It is critical that critical documents and information be kept in a location where employees can easily access them. Tools like Google Drive and Dropbox allow anyone to add, edit, and download assets to keep them up to date.
Communication tools: It is simple to demonstrate how to do something in an office. This becomes much more difficult for remote teams. Loom enables you to record short videos of your screen in order to create explainer videos that your team can easily access, save, and replay.
Meeting tools: While platforms such as Zoom and Google Meets can handle the basics, We’ve was purposefully designed to be an all-in-one virtual events and meeting platform to make meetings more memorable, engaging, and impactful.
Fun tools: These aren’t strictly necessary, but they’re a lot of fun. PizzaTime and CoffeeTime make it simple for your entire team to order coffee or pizza at the same time, allowing you to plan a pizza party or coffee break together. Maintain morale by organizing a surprise hangout where food and drinks are delivered to your team’s door.
How to Motivate Remote Workers
One of the challenges of managing remote employees is engaging a team that does not get to connect on a regular basis outside of work. It’s possible that your remote employees don’t know each other, and it’s even possible that you’ve never met your employees in person. So, how do you assist them in bonding? There are numerous virtual team-building activities available, but games are our favorite way to help teams bond. Playing together is a great way to engage team members, get to know each other outside of their regular workday tasks, and shift workplace power dynamics as they interact in a new way.
Make play a priority, from Pictionary to Lip Sync Battles — employees who bond and form strong bonds with their teams are more likely to feel committed to and remain at their workplaces.
To Sum Everything Up
If you’re wondering how to lead your remote team better in 2022, the tips above should help. Follow our advice on how to better lead a remote team meeting and try out the useful tools for managing a team remotely. Additionally, scheduling recurring team-building experiences is critical to developing and sustaining a strong and engaging company culture while managing remote teams. Now, go forth and enjoy managing your remote workforce!
Learn more from business and read Instructions to Progress Your Company to Remote Work.