Leading Remote on the Fly

With more businesses opting for remote work while facing Covid-19, you may find yourself in the situation of suddenly leading a remote or hybrid team. You may even be navigating the challenges of working remote while leading remote for the first time. While more and more businesses allow the occasional work from home day, working remote for an extended period of time can have additional challenges.

There are a number of articles and guides popping up that deal with issues like security, process, and tools to use for remote work. Here are a few quick tips on the people aspect for managers and leaders, which is just as important, but sometimes easy to overlook.

Make Employees Feel Seen and Heard

One of the biggest challenges right now will be that many people are working remote and socially isolating themselves who aren’t used to doing either. Loneliness and isolation are common issues for remote workers anyway, even for those of us who love it and do it daily. Know that it will be important to support your team through that.

Make your team feel seen and heard by maintaining communication, listening to concerns, and keeping an eye out for signs that things aren’t going well. Ask questions and listen to the answers. Make sure that people are involved in the collaboration, information-sharing, and decision-making that they normally are or should be involved in. It can be easy to miss remote employees when sharing information and making quick decisions.

One of the keys here is that you need to be deliberate about sharing information and making sure people are included in decisions and actions. What may come naturally in the office setting may require intentional purpose in the remote setting. It’s easy to forge ahead with a decision, thinking that you don’t want to bother the remote workers or that it’s too much effort to convene the remote meeting. In some cases, this may be true, but try to make sure you are including and sharing, because if you don’t, it will further isolate remote workers and create a breakdown of trust on the team.

Encourage Communication On the Team

Communication is so important with remote teams. Encourage the team to communicate with each other and with you. For teams that are newly remote or hybrid, communication can help you maintain or create trust and help you stay productive.

Think about using both real-time and asynchronous communication. Have a text or forum stand-up where people can post what they are working on for the day. Use tools like Zoom or Skype to have video meetings. If part of your team is still in the office and some are remote, put everyone in front of a computer screen for the meeting. It will help level the playing field for your newly remote employees and make it easier for them to participate.

Make time for chit-chat and social time. If you don’t have it already, establish a place for team members to talk about things outside of work and their projects. Open and close meetings with a few minutes of chatting and sharing. Encourage and give access to the ability to have short coffee breaks over video chat. This helps not only to ease feelings of isolation, but also builds trust among team members.

Set the Expectations

If you didn’t set the expectations for remote work before people ventured out of the office, take some time to do it now. Having some guidelines in place can help reduce questions and anxiety and give everyone a clear foundation to work from.

A few areas where you might want to think about setting expectations, if you haven’t already, include virtual meeting protocol, process, and availability. Since process often includes a discussion of which tools for what, I’ll skip over that here because there are great guides elsewhere. For virtual meetings, talk about some guidelines for participation. How will you make sure that everyone is included? How will you make sure that everyone has a chance to give input? What are the common best practices like muting when not speaking or being in a quiet space for the meeting that you’d like everyone to follow?

For availability, think about whether you need everyone to be present during certain work hours or if there can be greater flexibility outside of scheduled meetings. Can people work earlier or later? Can they take extended breaks during normal business hours as long as their work gets done at some point during the day or week?

Setting expectations is also very important if you have found yourself with a hybrid team—some members in the office and some members working from home. Be clear about who gets to work from home and why. If some positions can’t work from home, be clear about that reason. Discuss ways with the in-office members that they could potentially have some flexibility as well. Watch for fissures and challenges between the two groups and deal with them quickly.

Be Flexible

Remote work often offers the chance for people to be more flexible. If your business model allows it, be flexible with people, particularly during the new adjustment. You may find that some of your team will be more productive working at odd hours or less stressed out if they are able to blend home and work to a greater degree than trying to balance it out with strict start and stop times. That might include a midday walk to get out of the house or being able to work later at night in exchange for spending time with their kids in the afternoon.

Flexibility will also be important as everyone adjusts to the for-now-normal. There will be hiccups and things won’t always go smoothly. Emotional issues may pop up for people not used to working from home for extended periods or between teammates when information isn’t communicated well. You may need to change processes on the fly. Staying flexible and adapting as changes happen can set a good example for team members who may be feeling anxious and upended by everything going on.

Trust Your Team

One of the common things I hear when talking to businesses and leaders about remote work is “How will I know if they are working?” The short answer is that you don’t. Trying to micromanage or using surveillance methods like tracking keystrokes erodes trust and creates larger issues. To a certain degree, you need to trust your team to get the work done. You may find that members of your team will be more productive working from home!

The longer answer is you can use project management tools and good old-fashioned communication to not only support your team, but keep an eye on progress and any potential issues there. Does that mean that you may need to spend more of your time communicating with your team? Yup. You might need to delegate some other tasks or delay nonessential tasks in order to up the communication with your team.

Take Care of Yourself

If leading or managing remotely is new to you, particularly if you are also navigating working remotely for the first time, it will be important to take care of yourself. Have a trusted colleague, mentor, or coach that you can reach out to for advice or just to share some of the challenges with. Find a process that works for your situation and model good practices for your team. Talk about taking breaks, establishing boundaries for work, and other healthy behaviors and then follow through.

Leading a virtual team can be challenging, but there can be great rewards to doing so too. As a leader, you set the tone for the team and your approach and response can make this new-for-now normal easier for everyone, while still maintaining productive work experiences.