How can you foster a culture of collaboration in a remote team?

In my overall tenure till date and especially post COVID, the remote working has become a new normal. However, in the recent a year or so, now this is becoming more hybrid. Hence, it’s not that relevant to tell that we are physically working together, remote team is still relevant, it’s important to foster the culture of collaboration. Have common group in your Messaging system to exchange the thoughts & official information. Try to meet in person atleast once in 6 months to have that personal connect. Encourage your teams to meet on regular basis, even if there is an absence from your end and inculcate the habit of sharing the minutes of the meeting so that everybody is apprised. These are some simple things to be together.

The most important thing to consider for successful remote work is: 1. trust between team members 2. commitment and responsibility of each of the members 3. have the necessary tools to do remote work 4. Organization is very important, so having scheduled follow-up meetings can contribute to a dedicated space for each topic.

Identify the tools that work best in your remote management environment. Leverage emails, chat platforms, cloud based documentation, notification systems and online meeting tools to keep everyone on the team engaged - all the time. Build effective and non-laborious workflows with any of the above tools to make it easy for team members to communicate effectively.

Carefully plan team meetings as well as one-on-one meetings with a regular cadence. Plan the agenda, offline document preparation and reading material for meeting preps. Do not come to the meetings unprepared and/or try to get clued in on the agenda after joining a meeting. Come prepared with a 'draft' point of view, discuss the issues threadbare ad come to conclusions. Do not leave the check-in meeting with a specific, actionable plan for the day or the week.

'Single source of truth' is a powerful keyword here. DO not duplicate information in multiple places. Put extra effort to maintain one single place for one information - find ways to reference the information wherever required - without duplication.

Autonomy is important in building a productive team - more so in a remote environment. Allow people to make mistakes. And when they make mistakes, do not jump to provide precise solutions. Instead, discuss general direction of investigation, root cause analysis and let the team member discover/fumble their way to the right place. This will not only build trust, confidence in the team member, it will unleash a level of creativity that will provide multifold results in the long run.

Without a doubt, having each team member responsible and committed to their role, focused on teamwork, is of great help to achieve successful remote work.