How to Effectively Manage Geographically Dispersed Teams
At Prialto, our team is dispersed between North America, Central America, and Asia and our clients are spread throughout the world. Keeping such a diverse team aligned and motivated is a challenge, but over the years we’ve homed in on the most effective strategies to keep everyone feeling connected to each other and our vision.?
Here are our top five best practices for managing geographically dispersed teams.?
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1) Host Weekly Team Meetings?
Hosting weekly team meetings is one of the best ways to keep dispersed teams aligned on goals, clear up confusion about the projects they’re working on, and brainstorm solutions to challenges they’re facing.?
To have effective meetings with dispersed teams you need to set ground rules that prevent power dynamics from silencing some of the voices on your team.?
According to Tsedal Neely, an Organizational Behavior professor at Harvard Business School, one of the biggest challenges that dispersed teams phase is biased perceptions of whose voices matter most.?
Typically, individuals who are closest to the boss, to headquarters, and/or make up the largest group, are the most dominant and tend to overlook people who are regionally isolated and/or are non-native speakers of the team's primary language.
To ensure that everyone on your team is treated equally, moderate your meetings to give everyone a chance to speak and step in if ideas from certain people are ignored. The more democratic you make your meetings the better.?
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2) Create a Robust Knowledge Management System?
Since dispersed teams lack the networks of shared knowledge that exist within offices, you must create a robust knowledge management system so your employees have access to the information they need to be successful.?
Regardless of what tool you use to host your system, it needs to be:?
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3) Foster a Strong Company Culture?
Fostering a strong culture is one of the most impactful things leaders can do for geographically dispersed teams. Here’s why:?
In co-located teams, culture often flourishes organically since people can easily chat with colleagues, overhear news that spreads through the office, see what leaders and other teams are doing, etc. This creates a sense of connectedness and an abundance of shared knowledge that makes everyone feel like they're part of a team.?
Dispersed teams lack that ease of connectedness which leaves most individuals feeling detached from the rest of their company. To foster a strong culture you need to give your team lots of opportunities to get to know each other, stay up-to-date on what’s happening in your company, and have casual interactions with one another.?
Here are some simple initiatives that will help you foster a strong culture with your dispersed teams:?
Giving your dispersed team a variety of ways to get to know each other will foster a strong culture and encourage them to collaborate more frequently.?
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4) Have Regular 1:1’s?
When you don’t work in the same office as your direct reports it’s difficult to tell if they’re struggling with their work, feel overworked, going through a difficult period in life or experiencing other challenges that prevent them from performing their best.?
Having regular 1:1’s (weekly or every other week) is critical for you to stay in-tune with your dispersed team’s needs. Here are some tips to make your meetings productive:?
In addition to following these tips, ask your employees how they want to use your 1:1’s. This will enable you to use the time to best support them.?
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5) Set Clear Project Visions??
One of the biggest challenges that geographically dispersed teams face is that most people understand their own responsibilities but they lack an understanding of how their work fits into the project as a whole and when/how they should collaborate their colleagues.?
Here's how to help your team understand how their work fits into the big picture:?
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Bottom Line?
To effectively manage a geographically dispersed team you need to continuously work to ensure every employee understands how they fit into the bigger picture, remains in the loop on changes that affect their work, and feels supported by their team.?
This post was originally published to the Prialto blog here:
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