Engaging and Motivating Remote Teams

How engaged and motivated is your team? Do you understand their personality types, what drives them and how they operate under pressure? Leadership capability is stretched even more with remote team working! As a leader of a remote team, you need to know if your “wheels are spinning” or you have engaged everyone with their unique skills and abilities and with a common shared purpose. Hard facts on team performance will give you the evidence to know where you’re at! To achieve success in today’s volatile business world, leaders need to appreciate their team and use them to their fullest potential through successful team management skills.

“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.” Michael Jordan

50% of workers say they feel “voiceless”

The March 2020 article by Christine Trodella of Workplace from Facebook “4 ways to manage remote workers when you don’t know how long they’ll be working from home” noted a recent survey of 2,000 frontline workers and 2,000 managers in the U.S. and the U.K. where a major disconnect between workers and business leaders was highlighted. 90% of these employees feel connected to direct co-workers, but less than 15% feel connected to HQ. Worse, just 3% feel connected to their C-suite. That disconnect is affecting the bottom line. Less than half of workers say they share ideas with senior team members, and more than half say they feel voiceless. That can contribute to an environment where innovative ideas are stifled. Leadership can navigate remote working and create an organisation that values each employee by:

• On boarding, training and managing remote workers
• Encourage engagement while your workforce is distributed
• Adapting to changing environments and work culture
• Helping change managers mindsets about distributed/remote organisations

Tips to Engage and Motivate Remote Teams

Georgina Bowis Delivery Management Leader, Microsoft Services managed remote teams spread across seven different locations, four different time zones, for a region encompassing 78 countries. Despite the distance, a close and collaborative team culture was fostered, one which respected and celebrated diversity. This wasn’t without its challenges, however. Maintaining an inclusive environment and ensuring connection required both attention and intention. Managing a team remotely and from home was a great learning experience as a people leader. The top five tips for managing remotely and from home in the March 2020 article were:

• Make sure you are prepared
• Prioritise the relationships
• Running inclusive remote meetings
• Promoting collaboration
• Don’t forget the Fun

In addition my blog “Great Checklist for the Managers of Remote Workers,” a number of tips were provided for managing remote workers:

• Try and treat all interactions as close to usual as possible, so that you can help your team members adjust and stay engaged
• Choose one of your communication site’s channels or threads to use as an official ‘Announcements’ source, that your team knows to check regularly to keep up to date with important changes and information
• Arrange a video chat each morning with your team to get everyone feeling connected and pumped for the day ahead
• Have meetings one-on-one with each team member on a regular basis to keep them motivated and engaged
• Make sure to arrange check-ins that are to do with your team member’s wellbeing, not about work

Leadership isn’t easy and sometimes we need help. I am always here.

Get in touch today to learn more about how to build leadership skills to engage and motivate your remote team and set yourself up for success!

Stay Kind. Stay Courageous.

Sonia x

About The Author Sonia McDonald And LeadershipHQ

Sonia McDonald is the CEO and founder of LeadershipHQ and McDonald Inc. Sonia is a in demand keynote speaker, leadership coach and advisor, author and facilitator.

She believes we should lead with kindness and courage, from the heart, doing rather than telling and is known for her mantra ‘just lead’. She leads by example in all these areas and through her one on one practical coaching, leadership training for teams and organisations encourages others to do the same. Sonia has helped hundreds of people on their leadership journey to become the best version of themselves and in turn, inspire and bring out the best in others. Also she and her team have worked and partnered with a number of businesses and companies for over a decade build great leadership teams and cultures.

For more than 25 years, Sonia has been on the front lines of Human Resources, Leadership and People and Culture. She has held leadership positions worldwide and through experience, research and study come to realise what it takes to be a truly great leader.

Sonia has an ability to speak bravely and authentically about her own development as a leader, personal and career challenges in a way which resonates with her audience. She is recognised as a LinkedIn influencer and has become an in-demand keynote speaker, starts important conversations.

She is an award-winning published author of Leadership Attitude and Just Rock It! and writes regularly for publications such as The Australian, HRD Magazine, Smart Healthy Women and Women’s Business Media. Sonia has become recognised for her commentary around the topic of leadership, championing the up and coming leaders of tomorrow, advocating for women in business as well as building leaders in small business.

Keynote Topics for 2020

Sonia will give you peace of mind when booking a speaker. She is a proven world-class professional speaker with the skills to “rock an audience”. Her energy, empathy, kindness, sensitivity, and humour will enhance any event she appears.

1.       Leadership Attitude

2.       Just Rock It

3.       First Comes Courage

4.       Courage is Impact

5.       Courage is Purpose

6.       Courage is Resilience

7.       Courage is Kindness

Phone 1300 719 665

www.soniamcdonald.com.au

[email protected]

Follow Sonia below – 

https://www.instagram.com/sonia_speaker/

https://www.dhirubhai.net/company/sonia-mcdonald/

About LeadershipHQ

Outstanding Leadership Starts With You.

The key to success today is Great Leadership. Your leaders lead your culture and it’s the culture which drives your strategy.

We partner with organisations and businesses to grow great, kind and courageous leaders through bespoke leadership development programs and individual and group coaching – face-to-face and online.

We also celebrate and showcase great leadership through our Outstanding Leadership Awards and the Just Lead Podcast.

If you are a great leader or organisation, who wants to be even greater, we’d love to work with you.

Great Leadership begins with us.