I’ve talked before about managing remote teams and how for many of us, working remotely was never really a choice – it was forced upon us thanks to the pandemic. As a result, most of us were thrust into a way of working that was unfamiliar and presented a bunch of challenges, particularly for managers who no longer sat across a desk from their teams.
I fundamentally believe that the underlying principles of being a great manager are the same whether you are remote, in an office, or hybrid.
Having said that, if you do manage a remote team, there are definitely some ways that you can make some slight changes to your management style to account for not being in the same location as them.
Today, I want to share some practical tips and advice for how you can manage a remote team and tweak your approach.
Set clear expectations and objectives for each role
You should do this no matter what – whether your team is remote, in-office or hybrid. But it’s even more important to do this when your team is remote.
When your team is remote, you don’t get as much of an insight into their “invisible work” which may be adding value to your team. These are things such as:
- Ad hoc support for their colleagues on their tasks.
- One on one training sessions with their colleagues.
- Jumping into meetings or calls to help with project issues.
These are all the kinds of things that you may notice if they work in the same location as you. When you work remotely, you don’t see these kinds of things and whilst they obviously have value, you need to make sure that you have ways to see the value of their work in a tangible way as well.
This is likely to be via the deliverables that they work on day-to-day and the results that they achieve as a result.
It’s fine to include the less tangible stuff mentioned above, but be sure to also include stuff that you can clearly measure and see the impact of as well.
Get clear on how your team prefers to work
When you work in an office, how you work is fairly standard and you can usually just figure it out. For example, we’ve all worked with that person who loves to have a chat around the coffee machine, or that person who puts their big headphones on when they are trying to concentrate, or that person who is the first one in the office because they like to get an early start.
These are all ways of working that are less obvious when someone isn’t in the same location as you.
As a manager, you need to understand how your team prefers to work and what helps them be as productive and effective as possible. When they work remotely, you need to explicitly ask about and record these preferences.
As a starting point, you should ask them about things such as:
- What time do they typically prefer to start and finish working each day?
- Do they tend to stay “switched on” to chat tools such as Slack or Teams? Or do they mute them when they’re in deep work mode?
- If you need to give them a quick call, are you best to call their mobile or do it via Slack or Teams?
- Are they most responsive to chat platforms such as Slack / Teams or email?
- If you need to arrange team calls, do they prefer certain times of day for them?
Obviously, you can’t necessarily manage a team of people and take every single answer to these questions into account! But it’s a good starting point to get to know how they work so that you can be more aware of what to expect from them day-to-day.
Tell your team what they can expect from you
And on the flipside, you also need to tell your team how you work and what they can expect from you when it comes to communication and ways of working.
On top of this, you should be clear on how you plan to manage your team and take into account not being in the same location.
For example, you should be clear on things such as:
- How you’ll check in with them day-to-day e.g. will you mostly “leave them to it” and therefore, you’ll assume they are all good unless you hear from them.
- How you’ll brief tasks e.g. via calls, email, Slack etc.
- How you’ll run meetings and how often you’ll run them.
- What kind of communication you expect to have via different channels e.g. what is appropriate for Slack and what is appropriate for email or a call.
Ultimately, the goal here is to be clear on how you’ll communicate with your team day-to-day.
Don’t let your team confuse being visible with being effective
With the move to remote working over the last few years, many of us have become accustomed to being active on chat platforms such as Slack or Teams. Whilst generally these tools can aid productivity, they can also damage it.
One example of this is that some people have started to confuse being productive and effective, with being active and visible on Slack or Teams. The root cause of this is a misunderstanding of what being productive and effective means – they think that these things mean being visible and “looking like” they’re working. In a remote environment, you look like you’re working by being visible on chat tools – sending messages, emojis and perhaps sending emails.
Suffice to say, whilst these chat platforms are necessary to enable you to do good work, using them doesn’t mean that you’re doing great work and achieving the right outcomes.
As a manager, you need to help your team understand that being active on chat platforms doesn’t mean that they are getting work done. Further to this, you need to be clear on what delivering great work and achieving the right outcome actually means.
When you do this, you’ll naturally see them focusing their attention on the right areas and not mistaking “being visible” with being effective.
