7 tips on how to manage remote teams
In this article, you will discover useful tips on how to manage remote teams.
Managing a team of employees from a remote location requires adapting your management style to the specificities of working at home.
To achieve this, it is not enough to adapt management techniques that are often ineffective even within the company.
To succeed in your remote management, you need to put yourself in the shoes of your colleagues.
Here are some useful tips to implement efficient and caring team management as well as to successfully accomplish your mission as a remote manager.
1 – Learn to trust your team more
The first tip is to learn to trust your employees more than you would if you were in your company.
In this context, Kurland (2002) shows that there is a link between the level of control exercised over employees and the level of isolation experienced by employees.
Psychological isolation “is the feeling of being disconnected from others, lacking desired social relationships and influence, and that the need for support, understanding and other social and emotional aspects of interaction are not being met” (Shepherd-Banigan & al., 2016).
If you are a person who tends to want to control everything, you probably have a self-esteem issue.
In this case, you will need to do some work on yourself by taking advantage of professional coaching.
As you can see, in order to learn to trust others, you first need to have confidence in yourself.
How can you achieve this?
One way to achieve this goal is to start by taking small steps.
Show that you trust them by encouraging their autonomy.
Gajendran & al (2015) show that when an employee has a degree of autonomy, relying heavily on the manager’s trust in the employee to achieve work goals, performance improves regardless of telecommuting intensity.
How to foster autonomy?
Consider setting a specific goal to be achieved within a reasonable amount of time and defining specific milestones with your employee to check the progress of the work done.
In summary, you should adopt a more participative management style by trusting and empowering your team members.
2 – Set goals but stay flexible
In order to make your remote management effective, you need to set goals.
At the same time, you need to be flexible in terms of working hours and how to reach those targets.
Avoid planning fixed working hours and limit yourself to organizing only one daily meeting per day to review the actions to be taken and the main difficulties encountered by your teams.
What counts at the end of the day are the results and the well-being of your co-workers.
If, for various reasons, you understand that some team members prefer to adapt their working hours to the requirements of their personal life, then be understanding.
If your team is making progress and the results are positive, then your management is effective.
At the same time, set some rules to avoid the risk of burnout.
For example, define the minimum break time in the morning and in the afternoon.
Remind people of the importance of disconnecting mentally and practically from work in the evening.
Suggest a simple and quick procedure to contact you when necessary.
Also, set up a few scheduled meetings to discuss issues that concern everyone.
If possible, make sure that the first 10 minutes of a meeting are used to maintain the social relationship between all the employees.
In summary, set some general principles to follow but don’t plan everything.
Tailor the execution of the work to the specific situation of each individual.
This is not a lack of discipline but rather a smart and effective way to manage in a supportive way.
3 – Listen to individual needs
Each of your colleagues is unique and each individual employee may face personal challenges related to homeworking.
Some personalities are more exposed to the risk of isolation.
They may be very perfectionists or even more often people who want to do well but have difficulty communicating their needs and emotions openly.
In order to avoid the loss of social ties and to prevent psychosocial risks, plan a weekly meeting with each of your employees, preferably by videoconference.
This way, you will be able to make sure that they are doing well or, on the contrary, to understand if they are going through a moment of psychological distress.
These conversations should be informal and have the objective of allowing you to become aware of any personal or professional problems they may be experiencing.
If you have any doubts about a colleague’s state of health, do not hesitate to talk about it with human resources, who can contact the employee and the work doctor if necessary.
Other colleagues may also work even if they are ill. According to Steidelmüller & al.(2020) telework can increase the risk of working despite illness, so-called presenteeism: the likelihood of showing presenteeism increases with the intensity of telework.
In summary, schedule regular meetings with each employee to provide them with the professional or personal support they need.
By doing so, you will be able to earn their trust and strengthen their work commitment.
4 – Don’t make assumptions
Working remotely complicates the quality of the communication you have with your teams.
Exchanges are often done by email and the risks of misunderstanding and misjudgment increase greatly.
At this stage, the biggest danger is to start making assumptions about each other’s behavior.
If this attitude persists, the risk of conflict increases, and this can have a negative effect on the motivation and productivity of the team.
For this reason, it is best to avoid making assumptions.
As soon as you start to suppose something, check your idea with the person concerned as soon as possible.
Doing so will help you prevent and reduce conflicts.
Even if you think you are right, learn to better manage your emotions and don’t assume you are right.
You don’t know the private lives of your colleagues and the problems they face.
It is by actively listening that you will be able to fully understand your team members.
In summary, manage your emotions better, be aware of their potentially harmful effect and use your empathy to provide the necessary support to your colleagues. To learn basic active listening skills, check out my active listening ebook.
5 – Manage introverts differently than extroverts
The previous tips are still valid, but they must be adapted to the personality of each individual.
Some of your colleagues are extroverts, preferring to communicate via video conference and feel more comfortable in groups.
Others are introverts and prefer one-on-one or small group communication.
Generally speaking, introverts are more comfortable teleworking than extroverts, who find themselves more lacking in social interaction.
To help extroverts, in particular, you can give them the opportunity to organize more informal meetings, which can help foster social ties between employees.
Even if introverts appreciate remote work more than others, they are also more exposed to the risk of isolation and burnout.
To help them, reinforce one-on-one exchanges with these employees.
In summary, each individual experiences remote work in a very different way.
It is therefore essential to find the right strategies to provide the most relevant help to each person.
6 – Take into account cultural differences
If you work with colleagues from different cultures, either in the same country or in a different country, the previous tips are still relevant.
However, it is essential to be aware of the impact that each culture has on communication.
For example, the notion of punctuality is not the same from one country to another.
Working hours may also be different.
The style of management that is expected can also vary from one nation to another.
This means that in order to successfully manage multicultural teams in telecommuting, you need to integrate the above and other elements into the way you manage your teams.
If, on the other hand, you are locked into your own culture where you feel secure, you will not be able to effectively manage your entire team.
Working with a communication coach can help you broaden your view of what is “right” or expected from people who share cultural norms different from yours.
In short, become culturally aware and integrate what you learn into your management style.
7 – Help your team to reduce stress sources
Although homeworking has many benefits for both companies and employees, it can also be a source of stress.
Among these stressors is the difficulty employees have in defining and maintaining the boundary between their work and personal lives.
In agreement with Putro & Riyanto (2020), it is important to define space and time boundaries when telecommuting. Space boundaries to differentiate between places for work and non-work. Time boundaries to differentiate when it is okay to take care of the house and when it is necessary to perform work tasks.
As a manager, you have a responsibility to educate your team on the importance of creating a workspace that makes it easy to get things done, reduces the stress of working from home, and keeps productivity high when teleworking.
Another aspect that can be a source of stress during telecommuting is the need to maintain a boundary between work and personal life in relation to the organization.
Obada-Obieh, Huang & Beznosov’s (2021) study shows that having to use a camera for business communications, can be experienced as a violation of privacy.
For this reason, you should never force a team member to activate their webcam if they do not want to.
Again, try to manage your tendency to be too controlling as this can have a negative impact on the well-being of your employees.
Conclusion on how to manage remote work effectively
In this article, I shared with you 7 tips on how to manage your team remotely.
By following these tips, you’ll be able to become a more effective manager appreciated by the team.
You can take advantage of a free session with a team coach by writing to us using our contact form, or by calling us at +33 6 69 46 03 79 or on WhatsApp at the same number.
Read this article in other languages
Français : Comment manager en télétravail comme un pro en 7 simple étapes
Italiano: Come gestire un team di lavoro da remoto in 7 semplici passi