Leadership Tips for Remote Teams: Best Practices and Avoidable Mistakes
Remote teams have become a staple for companies hoping to attract top global talent, boost productivity, and cut their office-renting costs. While remote workers may be happier and contribute more, this unprecedented working arrangement brings unique challenges. Team leaders need to adopt a new outlook and diversify their skill sets to tackle them.
Here, we examine several strategies team leaders should adopt when managing remote workers. They highlight best practices but also point out what to avoid. Both should prove instrumental for your and your team’s future successes.
Adopt a Clear Vision & a Results-First Approach
Losing one’s sense of direction is a frequent side effect of transitioning to a remote working model under poor management. Not being sure of one’s responsibilities and deadlines erodes teamwork, trust, and results.
A clear vision of what your team should accomplish in the short- and long-term should serve as your general guiding principle. From there, you can establish specific workflows, delegate tasks, and measure metrics that ensure you’re all moving in the right direction at an acceptable pace.
That said, how you get there isn’t as important as the results themselves. Some team members may need less time than others to accomplish a task or are more productive during unconventional hours. If such idiosyncrasies lead to better outcomes, you shouldn’t discourage them.
Foster a Culture of Trust
The lack of physical proximity may make some leaders feel like their control over their teams is slipping. While natural, this can backslide into a need to overcompensate by micromanaging, which no one benefits from in the long term.
Trust implies a belief in your team members’ competencies and results in autonomy that helps people concentrate and perform better. It also means making yourself available for discussions and being the person team members will naturally want to look towards for guidance in a crisis without being reluctant or fearful.
Rather than trying to watch over everyone’s shoulder, adopt a mentor-mentee relationship with others to foster their growth more organically.
Facilitate Communication
Remote arrangements have removed part of the human element from the working experience, making communication more challenging and formal. Disparate working hours and geographical locations can also make synchronous communication even trickier.
One of your remote leadership responsibilities is to set up clear communication channels. On the one hand, there’s communication concerning specific steps in your processes via project management apps, standard video calls, and huddles via business communications platforms. On the other hand, you’ll also want to consider establishing less formal virtual meetup spots where team members can get to know each other better.
Keep the number of mandatory meetings to a minimum. A five-minute video check-in or global Slack message should always be the default. If a meeting is necessary, ensure you’re pulling people away from their other duties only if their attendance is essential. Structure the meeting so there are no preambles. Take care no one goes off on tangents, so you can all return to essential work sooner.
Consider Everyone’s Online Safety
Leaving the office also means leaving behind the layers of safeguards the IT department maintains against hackers and other digital threats. Remote employees need to be especially vigilant since adopting unsafe habits can have severe consequences for your company’s data integrity, financial stability, and reputation.
Give special attention to password hygiene, as compromised credentials are a leading cause of data breaches. Have the team use a password manager that will replace their old, possibly samey, and easy-to-crack logins with unique and strong alternatives. Password managers make logging in from different devices and sharing account details safer. They also let you set up 2FA for any account that needs the extra security benefit.
Ensure that everyone is up to speed on core cybersecurity competencies, such as the importance of keeping their devices up to date, using the best VPNs for secure connection, recognizing phishing and other social engineering attempts, and avoiding unsecured public networks.
Create Opportunities for Community Building
Never even meeting your coworkers, much less getting to know them through regular interaction, strains the definition and cohesion of modern teams. If people feel disconnected from and distrustful of others they’re supposed to collaborate with, they’ll be far less likely to voice concerns or contribute new ideas.
Actively create opportunities that engage different teams on the same project. Have people buddy up between teams to encourage the sharing of experiences and knowledge. Encourage virtual after-hours activities, team building, and physical meetups if these are possible.
Create a positive work atmosphere that fosters inclusion and a sense of purposefulness. Encourage team members to voice their concerns and be open to changes in policies or workflows if they connect people without jeopardizing productivity goals.
Lastly, always take time to celebrate successes and crucial milestones. Emphasize the team effort required to achieve them while acknowledging individual contributors with praise and incentives.
Be Empathetic & Flexible
Whereas offices provide a homogenous environment that’s supposed to cut down distractions and promote productivity, everyone’s home situation is different. Some team members may have small children and no support system. Others with extroverted personalities may find the lack of human interaction demotivating.
Successful remote leaders need to familiarize themselves with each team member’s individual needs and try to accommodate them within reason. Achieving overarching goals may be a priority, but this shouldn’t come at the cost of employees’ well-being.
Support their mental health by offering regular check-ins that have nothing to do with assessing productivity. Make yourself available as an understanding fellow human who knows what they’re going through. You could also organize group activities that bolster mental resilience or make mental health resources available.
Conclusion
Shifting workplace circumstances are driving change in effective managerial styles. To succeed in this dynamic new environment, one needs to adopt a flexible, empathetic, servant-leader attitude that recognizes and provides opportunities to nurture people’s potential. The most successful remote teams already demonstrate how physical distance, different cultural backgrounds, and unique life circumstances don’t impede excellence. We hope the advice shared here will bring you a step closer to becoming a leader that makes such a team possible.
