Managing remote teams can be complicated, exhausting, and disappointing if you let it. That’s a big dose of accountability to start, and we know it. It’s 2024, though, and remote work is not slowing down. If anything, it’s going to become more and more appealing over time, especially for high-skilled professionals. So, you’ll want to get ahead of the curve. You want to recognize its challenges, face them head-on, and use this new way of working to your advantage—and there are many of them.
That’s what we are going to do in this post. We will cover the following.
- What is a remote team?
- Why are they so common now?
- Challenges of managing remote teams
- Tips for managing remote teams—for all industries
- How to use remote teams to your advantage
What is a Remote Team?
A remote team is a group of professionals that work together on predetermined tasks, projects, and objectives from all different locations. They can be spread across states, countries, and continents. They can be a part of the same organization or they can be members of different ones collaborating for a period of time.
Most of the time, they are built out of necessity (Ever heard of COVID-19?), but they are occasionally built intentionally. Those processes look very different.
No matter how they come to be, remote teams are extremely unique. For one, they could not have existed before the internet. But also, they function in ways that colocated teams simply would never dream of. Working in the same room as your teammates is way, way different from working across oceans.
Differences in Managing Remote Teams
One of the key features of remote teams, especially when managing them, is communication. You can’t just pop into the other room and ask someone a question. Depending on the software your team uses to communicate, you basically send your message into the aether and hope someone gets to it eventually.
That leads us to the next point. There is no one place where people work (also known as the office), which means it’s not a cost your company has to consider. Team members can work anywhere with a reliable internet connection—that’s a lot of range.
Lastly, because of the lack of a centralized location (and often timeframes), physical limitations and disabilities don’t really interfere. If you use a wheelchair, it’s much easier getting to your home office than traveling each day to the actual office. No matter how mobile you are, not having a commute can be a great perk of working on remote teams.
Challenges of Managing Remote Teams
No working style is perfect. And for those doubting the efficacy of remote work, your fears are not entirely unfounded. Here are some of the most common challenges to managing remote teams.
- The Clock Can Run – It may not be fun to discuss, but it can happen. Without the comradery or co-working that keeps people productive and moving through tasks, time can get away from them.
- Blinders Are On – If you are separated from your team by an ocean, it will be extraordinarily difficult to know what people are working on day-to-day.
- Lack of Trust – Without open, regular communication, you don’t allow room for trust to develop. You have to know people to trust them, and if there have been no attempts to be known or get to know each other, then that’s difficult.
- People Can Overwork – You might think that people working a lot is an advantage in managing remote teams, but it’s not. Separation from “working time” and “non-working time” is much more difficult on remote teams. This means that the effort, ideas, and thoughts people contribute can suffer greatly as they get increasingly burnt out.
- Communication is Always Official – You aren’t just going to pop over to the other side of the country and have a chat about how your teammate’s weekend went. This can contribute to the lack of trust and understanding of where your team is at mentally.
- Different Cultures – Different cultures have different ways of working, and that can cause conflicts over time. For example, Spaniards are known for taking a 2.5-hour lunch break, and Japanese people are known for working well into the evening hours all week long.
- People Can Isolate – Without regular communication, it’s easy for remote workers to go days or even weeks without communicating with their team members.
Our Best Tips For Managing Remote Teams
We won’t lie. Managing remote teams is a challenge, but that can be said about managing any type of team. But at the end of the day, people are people. And there are specific ways of managing that work much better than others, remote or not. So, with all that being said, here are our best tips for managing remote teams.
- Clarify Communication Channels & Use Them
- Be Clear About Goals
- Be Flexible
- Check-In Regularly
- Have Empathy On-Hand
- Provide All The Resources
- Use Technology
- Be A Stickler About Onboarding
- Cultivate Trust
- Create Strong Personal Connections
- Make Job Descriptions Clear
- Implement Structure
- Encourage Feeback
- Have Physical Meetings
- Make Collaboration The Default
- Be Normal & Let People See That
- Connect Goals
- Teach Independence
Each tip is described in detail below.
1. Clarify Communication Channels
People should have clear expectations about when and how you communicate with them. If your organization is cool with texting, do that (but do so respectfully). Don’t make people’s lives outside of work more difficult if you can help it.
Also, communicate regularly. People can develop expectations around consistency, so make sure that your format and your schedule are consistent.
2. Clear Up Goals
This one might seem like common sense, but it’s not. If you were to comb through transcripts of past conversations with your team, you’d be surprised at how little you do this. Why? Well, it can be hard to put your goals into words as if speaking them is the commitment itself.
So, do your team a favor and do this often. What you don’t clarify, they will interpret.
3. Be Flexible
Sometimes, people will be late, unprepared, or need to reschedule. You are so much better off when you roll with the punches. Not only is managing remote teams less stressful in those situations, but it also supports your team’s opinion of you if you understand. That is NOT to say you should let those things become standard. Rather, you should be a bit more accommodating when people break the standard.
Is this your first time being a manager? READ THIS.
4. Check in Regularly
When your initiatives are irregular, you need to check in often. We think that a weekly pace is optimal. You could simply send an email that shares the following.
- Big goal
- Priorities
- Challenge to overcome
- Accomplishments
- Roadblocks
- Etc.
5. Remember Empathy
You need to have it and use it. That way, you can create a culture of support.
6. Provide Resources
When managing a remote team, you often have the ability to distribute resources, encourage people to learn, provide opportunities for improvement, and find ways to fulfill a need when it arises.
7. Use Technology
There are some incredible tools out there, many of which are available to you and your team. When managing remote teams, your tools can make or break the experience. Also, it’s extremely common for teams to have great tools already in use, but they aren’t sure how to use them. Don’t let that be you. Integrate where you can, automate as often as possible, and try to use technology to support your team.
8. Be A Stickler About Onboarding
When s*** hits the fan, you fall back on your training. So, ensure you have a thick backlog of training, explanations, and information for people to refer back to. Also, those who have never worked on remote teams might be a little lost on how to do it effectively. It takes a lot of initiative, learning, and adjustments.
Sometimes, it can be really insightful to discuss the following when you move through the onboarding process.
- The importance of a designated workspace
- How to create your own structure
- How to separate your working time and your personal time
9. Cultivate Trust
Trust is hard to come by these days. If you manage remote teams, you need to prioritize this. Continue to define your “why,” be as consistent as possible, and be transparent as often as possible. Also, teach people to lean on each other. That doesn’t mean that you help people take advantage of their coworkers, but it does mean helping each other when someone hits a roadblock.
10. Create Strong Personal Connections
The best managers know their team. They know the following.
- Working Styles
- Preferences (regarding communication type/regularity, tools, etc.)
- Needs For Success
- Goals (personal and professional)
- How each person is best coached
They know that one size does not fit all. They also get to know each person as much as their situation allows. That manager might even take the time in the onboarding process (or at regular intervals) to discuss the above topics. Trust us when we say that that conversation helps make managing remote teams a lot easier.
Ever heard of Agile Stakeholder Management? Read This.
11. Make Job Descriptions Clear
Again, this might seem like common sense, but it’s not. Most people’s understanding of a job description is a couple of vague sentences about what they do. It needs to be quite a bit more.
A proper job description is a clear explanation of the bare minimum expected of someone in this position. Make a clear boundary about what this job will be. Maybe even include some information about what this position is not. That way, you have clear performance indicators and a quality roadmap to help each team member understand their tasks and responsibilities.
12. Implement Structure
So many feel that having structure can kill creativity. They also think it’s a form of control—and it can be. But we pose “structure” as being a foundation for your team to work from. Keep things organized. Ask the same of others. Create a level of regularity that people can expect, rely on, and work up from.
13. Encourage Feedback
You might give a lot of feedback when managing remote teams, but you need to take it, too. Ask people for their notes, input, and thoughts. Make sure they feel safe to do so. Encourage others to take feedback while you lead by example.
14. Have Physical Meetings
We understand that this might be a privileged statement, but they help out a lot. Sometimes, it’s easy to forget that you are working with people. By giving your team a chance to get to know you and vice versa, you’ll make the whole team feel more connected—because you will be.
15. Make Collaboration The Default
Your team might be used to taking their to-do lists, returning to their corners, and getting to work without much input or collaboration from others. That standard is great for many reasons, but it can mean that the final products of that effort are less cohesive. A diverse set of ideas can improve output because the ideas aren’t so singular.
Collaboration can mean an email asking someone else to take a look at what you are working on and asking what their first thoughts are. They might see gaps that you simply can’t from your perspective. Ultimately, this tip makes asking for feedback, input, and first impressions less rare and scary.
16. Be Normal & Let People See It
Try and make more of your interactions with your teammates less formal. Show your team who you are, and let them get to know you. Why? A good manager is approachable. And by approachable, we mean open. That way, when stuff hits the fan, goes perfectly right, and everything in between, you will be involved more naturally.
This also helps the team function more like a team.
17. Connect Goals
People have goals. They can be professional with extremely personal origins or vice versa. Either way, we recommend that you learn what those goals are and help them get there. Connect their goals with those of the team and the company. Not only does this increase the context around those objectives, but it also increases engagement. As the person managing these remote teams, you’ll also learn much about each person’s “why.”
18. Teach Independence
Didn’t we just say that you need to make collaboration the default? Yes, we did, but that’s because there is a huge difference between dependence and collaboration. Remote teams are best when they are independent professionals who collect their skills for the sake of a common goal. Teach your team how to think for themselves, educate them on how to do their jobs better, and absolutely give them the tools to improve professionally.
How to get the most out of managing remote teams
It would be easy to slip into a micromanaging role when managing remote teams, but we beg you to resist that urge. It’s your responsibility to develop and maintain a solid foundation for those you oversee to work from. This is how you do it.
Let New Ideas Find You
Here at A.McBeth, Inc., we know it’s better to open our thinking caps, receive new ideas, and use them occasionally than act like we know everything. Project management is pretty uncomfortable with that attitude, so we are offering up new (and old) ideas all month long, so sign up to be notified the next time one pops up. You won’t want to miss it!
