When you want to engage your remote team: 5 tips for stronger connection
Last week we explored how to be a stellar remote employee. This takes some effort to stay productive, motivated, and connected to the right type of work. Whether you are working remotely or whether your manager and team are halfway around the world in another office, you are "remote" in some sense, and that takes special effort to be successful.
As a manager, you also need special skills and a certain mindset to manage a distributed team. I recently thought about it, and I have managed more people outside the US than in the US in my career. I have managed people in Canada, Ireland, the UK, Spain, France, Germany, India, Australia, and Singapore. I have greatly enjoyed interacting with and working across these different cultures. I have a wider perspective as a result.
To manage a remote team whether they work within the country you live in or not, one key is having a mindset of connection. A manager needs to connect often in short bursts and have these connections be varied in focus (not just about the work).
If you love to work independently and remotely and focus purely on the work, then remote people management is not for you. Managing someone in the next cube can be difficult; managing someone on the other side of the globe has its own set of challenges that can be overcome if you focus on connection.
I have five go-to's for managing someone who is not co-located with me. Sometimes, these can be difficult to execute based on what is happening in your life or your own work/role. The quest here is not to be perfect but to keep these actions top of mind and execute them when you can.
Connect weekly.
We have all come to love or hate virtual collaboration technology. Regardless of how you feel about Teams, Zoom, or Slack, these tools are fairly reliable. If you disagree, consult your local IT team or internet service provider. 🙂 Unless not possible, be sure to turn on your camera for one-on-ones. I don't think we always need to have our cameras on. Studies certainly have shown we can get more fatigued by having the camera always on. Our personal space can feel invaded and we need a break. For one-on-one meetings, I strongly believe in having them on. For other larger meetings, I think we can leave them off for a break. Seeing each other say hello, smile or laugh helps build a connection that we all strive for between manager and employee.
Get a little personal.
I don't like to get too nosy into personal lives in a working relationship because I don’t know how private some people may be. I can be somewhat private and don't always like to share. That is more about me than about anyone else. Today, it is more than okay to ask about family, kids, parents, friends, pets, how they are doing at home, etc. Right now, you may have team members struggling to manage kids, aiding aging parents, or battling their own health problems - physical or mental. Not everyone may be willing to share but be caring and politely ask questions to try and help. Get to know your people and make small talk. It matters.
Manage by results not by presence detection.
I used to have a manager in London while I was in Chicago. She managed me by whether my presence detection was green, red, or yellow. Please don’t fall into this trap as it is easy to do. Manage by results, discuss status every week and share frequent updates. If Bill is offline for two hours, maybe he is having connection issues, maybe his dog is eating his wife's favorite shoes, maybe he is reading or working on his iPad, or maybe he is solving a hairy problem while folding laundry. There are many reasons to not be glued to your work laptop and still be productive! Some computers immediately change to yellow if you simply lean over to grab the pen you dropped. They can be very sensitive so don't judge a person by the color of their presence dot on the screen.
Focus on meaningful work.
This is a great time to meet with others and uncover pain points you and your team can help solve. Part of the connection mindset is connecting your team to the bigger picture and strategy and aligning the work to this strategy. The team will feel connected to the organization if they know they are working on something important, tied to a key revenue stream, innovating a new product or service with great potential, or solving a critical issue. Being out of alignment feels awful, quite frankly. When I am disconnected, in the dark, or not aligned, I feel like I am not adding value, which in turn makes me question my role in the organization. This type of connection to meaning in the context of the company is critical to engaging your team.
Help cross things off the to-do list.
I never knew how some of my team members felt at risk because they are not at the headquarters location. They thought "out of sight, out of mind". Now, more than ever, people are concerned about their workload and job given the number of lay-offs happening. If you are a knowledge worker, there is a ton of work to be done. If you find your team is in a holding pattern while the larger strategy is being sorted out, that is the perfect time to work on projects you never have time for. This is the perfect time to tackle archiving or managing documents, streamlining processes, creating content calendars for the next 6 months, or planning what we can do. There is lots of work to do! If you have a minute to think about it, there are many value-added tasks and projects any team can do. Identify quicker ones to cross them off the list. There is nothing more satisfying than striking a line through a task on a list.
Of course, this list includes five key actions. There are many, many more that managers can do to engage their remote team, which I have written about in many blog posts and my book: Succeed from the Middle. If you approach everything with the mindset of building a connection -- connection with you, the team, and the broader strategy and purpose of the organization -- that will lead you to the best actions to take.
Next week, we will focus on what leaders can do from an organizational perspective to enable effective remote work.