How to thrive as a Remote Working Team
Same Tribe, New Land
Objective
To create and share actionable and effective insights and ideas for Leaders of Teams who have moved to a primarily remote way of working.
Context
We are in new territory, facing situations and challenges most of us have not experienced before.
- Prioritise speed over perfection.
- Do however have a long term aim. Helps ensure that short term actions have meaning.
- Make decisions in tranches. Make some decisions / choices now, try things out, learn and adapt.
- Communicate
Remote Working Teams - The key Steps to take
At the crisis outset, perhaps you had to dash into set up, doing, delivering, just to get through the first week or two, And so perhaps you weren’t able to do the ‘setting ourselves up for sustained success’ stuff then. But do, do it now – it is not too late. Otherwise you risk falling into ways of working based on fragile foundations.
(1) Be mindful of Fears, Doubts & Insecurities
Are some of the team technophobes …. Are they panicing, but scared to tell anyone. Ensure there is no shame in this, and enable everyone to get the help they need to get going with the tech. e.g. maybe people can buddy up (tech lover + technophobe), or you have a ‘person / place to go for help’.
Are some of the people uncomfortable about disclosing their home by VC? This can sound trivial to some people in the current crisis context. But to those who are concerned, this is real. Maybe make a joke about this early, show your own vulnerability. It is key to have everyone on video in the time ahead (creates trust, avoids some people multi-tasking), so help everyone to feel comfortable.
Isolation:
Different personality types will be more or less suited to remote working. Some people thrive on physical contact energy, others may love the opportunity to have lone thinking time. Get people to share how they are feeling, this gives insight for later discussion about ‘how will we work together’ and the sort of support different team members might need to be most productive.
Access to information: Make sure at the outset, everyone is clear of what information is where, on what system, how to access it. Don’t assume everyone knows this, and they may be embarrassed to ask. Make sure all Tools (google hangout, Doodle, Trello, Zoom…) are available to everyone.
Where to go for support: Again. Don’t assume everyone knows. Bring together a list of what support is available & how to access it.
By having early on open dialogue, ensuring that everyone contributes, you can get a sense of where the team is as you ramp up virtual working, and whether any individuals need extra help.
(2) Share & (re-)Agree key principles
We are the same tribe, but we are in a new land!
Remind yourselves of your Purpose & Values – this is even more important now.
How does what we do, contribute to the company Purpose? How do we use the Values as a lens through which to make decisions.
Remind yourselves of your goals / objectives. Do they still stand, or do you need to put them to one side for now and come back to it when the organisation knows more. Meanwhile, what are our shared short term goals?
Remind yourselves, what are our strengths as individuals and as a team … say it our loud …we need our strengths now.
What are our key challenges right now – get them out in the open. Prioritise, and decide who leads / how to solve the most urgent / biggest.
Outputs not ‘presenteeism’.
We will all have different work schedules.
A need to be seen to be present (time of emails, excess contribution, a need to be in every meeting…) creates anxiety and decreases effective delivery.
Drive autonomy down through levels … this increases engagement, gives opportunity for people to step-up, and increases speed.
Progress is Powerful
How does individual & team delivery, contribute to the overall Purpose & Goals (above)
Use the relevant tools to enable visible progress eg trello,
Call out progress highlights in the weekly team session
(3) Specific actions in the early phase:
(NB: What you decide for the first 2 weeks is not set in stone forever. Make decisions, try it out, learn and then come back together as a group and revise / evolve.)
Create a dedicated work space (if at all possible, recognising home – family physical constraints).
Get that space as ergonomically good as possible … heights of chair, desk, screen eye line. Sit upright with heels on the floor. Enough light…..
Have flexible work schedules – start & stop times that fit life’s needs. Which times do we need concurrent working (whole team, sub groups), which meetings need which people. Share your schedules so people know when you can be contacted and when not.
Maintain work/private boundaries.
Break up work time … e.g. try to get up and move for 5 minutes every 30 min.
Break up big tasks into chunks.
Agree which tools are used for what interactions e.g. project management, messaging, sharing fun content, video conferencing.
Have a system to avoid constantly being disturbed by notifications on multiple feeds. (The cost of constantly switching context is very high – it leads to shallow thinking and inefficient use of time). When you need deep thinking on a task, focus on that – turn off notifications. Allocate specific time for emails.
Set up informal / coffee chats. These are still a critical part of effective work life, but will not happen by chance as when we were physically together.
How to run virtual meetings.
- What outcomes do we want from the meetings
- Who owns each agenda item
- Summarise key agreements at the end
- Disagree & commit. No silent disagreement. Encourage open exchange / disagreement / multiple perspectives within the discussion, and when a decision is made, everyone commits to it and what they have to do.
- Everyone must have positive intention
- Turn up on time. Start on time. Finish on time. (Clear priorities helps, in case not everything can be covered).
- Connect – everyone has video on (increases trust, decreases multi-tasking!); really listen to understand; agree some rules / signals if it helps .. e.g. raise hands for questions / to speak next. Maximum speaking time.
Some tasks require special types of meeting, e.g creativity, collaborative problem solving – give this particular thought / design
Abundant Communication:
Team meeting / Town Hall weekly (for some teams, you may want a short team session to start each day)
Leader – direct report one-to-ones weekly. Focus on how things are going, what you each need to succeed / support each other, not just task list.
Regular briefings.
‘Business meetings’ and informal / coffee catch ups.
Psychological Safety remains the key enable of team collaboration / success. This is based on (a) Mutual trust & respect & (b) Comfort with dissent / disagreement. Maintaining these positive conditions can be even harder when working remotely, so be explicit about a few things now to get started:
- disagree & commit
- things will get tough, VCs may end with some people frustrated – what do we do then
Last thoughts for now
Visible leadership is critical in a crisis
Care about your people – what is going on for them outside of work
Role model the behaviours you want your reports to adopt with their people
Great leaders, businesses, teams come out of crises stronger
Ask for help, you don’t have all the answers – you don’t need to, you just need to know how to get them.
With thanks to great contribution by Tracy Bertran at Team Brilliance.
Peter Soer