by These distance teams bring many new opportunities for businesses. But many business owners feel lost in space or on a remote island. Also, many business managers feel a loss of control and they really fear that productivity will decrease and they would not be able to take countermeasures if they see their employees less or not at all.
It is often assumed that the use of some kind of management tool is sufficient for a remote team to work together productively. The right tools are important. However, leading a team remotely places completely new demands on everyone that go far beyond the use of tools.
Experts from Maiden stride briefly describe the importance of the tasks for managing a productive remote team.
Contents
1) Set clear goals
The team should know the goals of the business and have a defined plan to achieve those goals. Everyone should know how to contribute to the goals of the company. This is nothing new. Even in an on-site team, clear goals are essential for guiding each individual on the team. It is only in a virtual team that goals need to be defined with the team so that a clear commitment is created and team members need to interact with each other in order to achieve their goals. personal. This creates better communication and coordination and prevents everyone from working in isolation as a lone wolf.
As a leader, it’s important to know your business goals and understand where your team fits in the picture. You should be able to effectively convey this information to your team.
Prioritize work, the team will often work on multiple projects, with people in different time zones, at the same time. You should be able to determine which project is more important than the other and how the tasks are prioritized. The transparency of the work facilitates the work and the orientation in the remote team. Employees need to be able to track their tasks and the whole team. And as a manager, you need to keep an eye on progress, without micromanaging.
2) Define roles, responsibilities, and structures
Flexible working hours and greater autonomy do not mean that work becomes unstructured. Structure and guidelines are absolutely necessary for long-distance teams. Clear roles and responsibilities and transparency about who makes what decisions and who needs to be informed and when. Everyone should know exactly what their responsibilities are. There are proven methods here to create and maintain exactly that in the team.
For example, create a mind map of the skills you need to achieve your goals and tasks and clarify which employees can take on which roles. In this way, you also consciously focus on the strengths of each individual.
3) Check the performance
As an administrator, you ought to consistently monitor everything without getting constantly fussed over. Micromanagement annihilates trust, independence, and responsibility. Be that as it may, it is the central premise of a useful remote group.
Do not “follow” any hour. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if your team member starts the day at 6 a.m. or 12 p.m., or works the same 8 hours/day, or has a varied schedule. If it is necessary for accounts receivable or by law to enter hours, employees should do so independently and on their own in a project management tool. Focus on the results. Keep an eye on whether the tasks are completed on time and of high quality, and not when they are being performed. This requires clear criteria for good performance. It varies depending on the task and the role in the team.
4) Create values and meaning with your team
Team culture is implicit. In a shared work environment, this happens in silence. I am of the opinion that culture and values should be deliberately discussed among themselves in a distant team. Virtual teams without a common work environment must explain their culture, purpose, and values.
Regular inquiries are: What do you figure the group ought to achieve? How does the group add to business objectives? How does every individual contribute? How is group achievement estimated and individual execution evaluated?
Eventually, these are key standards by which the group can pass judgment on their own conduct, regardless of whether they feel like they are in a remote location.
5) Use the right tools for different communication occasions
Choose the right tools for remote team communication, taking into account both asynchronous and synchronous communication. Gradually reduce your emails, as they have proven to be the biggest disruptors to productivity. Leave the email behind and step into the brave new world of real-time communication. This form of communication saves much more time in some cases.
Even if tools are available, it does not mean that communication takes place between them. Every member of your team should be prepared to respond to calls, texts, emails, or direct messages on a regular basis. It should be transparent who is available, how, and when, this is especially important when there are different time zones.
Ensure clear, concise, and targeted communication. Always think before sending something and consider how the information can be absorbed by the other. Plain text can be interpreted in different ways. And that doesn’t just happen in cross-cultural teams.
6) Establish guidelines for communication and collaboration with your team in a team agreement
Working with your team, create guidelines in the form of a team agreement on how your remote team can best work together. Among other things, it is agreed what roles and responsibilities exist, what information is shared how and where what communication tools and channels are used for what, and how cooperation is organized in the different time zones. If such a team agreement is adopted by the whole team, there is a high level of engagement and the fundamental issues have been clarified in advance.
Conclusion
In a remote team, autonomy is crucial for several reasons: Team members must remain engaged without anyone looking over their shoulder or in constant contact with managers and colleagues. Everyone should have the skills to make decisions when no one is online. Your role and task as a manager are to empower your team to do this and work in the best possible way.
A good manager of a remote team sets goals and makes performance criteria transparent, clarifies roles, communicates clear priorities, organizes resources to get the job done, and prevents isolation. Overall, you need to promote a team culture that encourages communication and problem solving, rather than micromanagement. Empower your employees and make full use of the skills of each team member. You should also recognize the smallest achievements and give your opinion on them. Then your employees will feel valued and involved.
————————————————————————————————————————————— Author Bio
Name- Raunak Pandey
Bio- Raunak is a Mechanical Engineer by qualification & Marketer by passion. He is the co-founder of Maiden Stride, a leading digital marketing company In Lucknow that provides world-class search engine marketing services and website & application development
