Key Practices for Leading Remote Teams

When you move into a role leading a remote team, the following practices are critical to establishing clarity and team cohesion as well as maintaining high performance on an ongoing basis:

1. Clarify Mission and Goals

Whether they are co-located or remote, team members want to understand what they are expected to accomplish together. They want to understand how their individual roles contribute to overall team success. As a team leader, it is important that you clarify roles and expectations with each team member individually.

2. Build Relationships

As a team, agree on ways that remote team members can work together to create and maintain relationships with each other. Just as co-located teams sometimes gather around the “water cooler” to chat about work and non-work issues, remote teams can gather around a “virtual water cooler” to do the same. Instant messaging and social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter can help facilitate this type of interaction. With that said, it is always a good idea to take advantage of opportunities to meet face-to-face when and if that is possible.

3. Foster Inclusion

Whether your remote team is made up of members from across the country or across the globe, it is a given that team members will represent a variety of backgrounds and cultures. As a leader, encourage diverse perspectives and ideas during your team meetings. Introduce activities during meetings for team members to share experiences about their virtual working environment and locale.

4. Connect and Support

Set aside time and make a habit of connecting with each team member on a regular basis to check status, learn about issues or barriers and provide support. To avoid the appearance of “micro-managing,” negotiate a touch-base schedule with each team member based on your current business needs and the employee’s preferences.

5. Recognize and Reward

Recognition is valued by any team member, but for remote teams this is even more important since there are many hours of isolation from the leader and the rest of the team. As a leader, it is important that you look for every opportunity to recognize the accomplishments of individuals and the team as a whole. Consider rewards such as company logo attire or gift cards as appropriate. A simple acknowledgement of the accomplishment and a “thank you” can go a long way to keep your team motivated and engaged.

Enablers of Remote Team Effectiveness

If the leadership practices outlined above can be imagined as the way to steer the remote team “ship” and keep it on course, then the following Enablers of Remote Team Effectiveness can be thought of as the wind and the sails to keep the team moving forward.

Communication

Agree on communication protocol. This may be different for different team members. Some may want daily connection, others bi-weekly, and others once a week. Decide how your team will use phone and voicemail, email and conference calls. Agree on guidelines for the use of each communication medium, such as when to use each, expected response times, formatting of subject lines, etc.

Technology

Explore the various technologies available within your organization to help the team more effectively communicate and share information. Some of these may include web meeting or videoconferencing, web-based collaboration tools or document management platforms.

Leadership

As we have discussed, the heart of leadership for a remote team is no different from leadership of any other team. As with any team, your role as leader is to clarify and communicate a compelling vision, provide guidance, remove obstacles to performance, coach and recognize achievements.

Perhaps one of the most important roles of the team leader is to provide the training necessary for people to do their jobs. In addition, developing talent in a remote work arrangement is just as important as in a traditional setting. Remote work arrangements can present unique challenges for training.

Part two of this article will appear in our next newsletter and will provide some Tips and Tools for Remote Team Learning Sessions and Knowledge Sharing. To receive an advance copy of this article via email, click here: