Lessons from a Home Office Veteran - Effective Tips for Leading a Remote Team

I'm fairly confident most of my friends in Marketing are saying, "Dan! You have to put a number in the title. You need three, or five, or twelve tips." The truth is I've been collecting these tips for so long, I have no idea how many there are, but I do know I employ the following pretty regularly. You should also know, my better half shared a home office with me for FIVE years. So, a few of these tips I picked up from eavesdropping on one side of her conversations. The point being, my approach is meant to be balanced. If you've got something to share with the tribe, please do so in the comments.

So, you're now managing a team remotely. If you have a "butts in seats" type of mentality, this environment might be pretty disturbing for you. If you take a "laissez-faire" approach to management, this information might help you avoid a few pitfalls.

Let's begin with a mentality to incorporate into all of your decisions and actions. BALANCE, sing it, B - A - L - A - N - C - E ... Baaaaaallllllaaaannncccceee. Your new situation requires you to balance support, encouragement, and accountability in a virtual space while simultaneously fostering a team mindset during a time when your team is experiencing unusual external and internal stresses. "Balance" will be the mantra that guides you to success.

Change the cadence of meetings to shorten and flex. You've got to tighten things up in a virtual space. So, make sure your sessions have an agenda, and the plan is suitable for the time allotted. If you usually have a 2-hour standing meeting on Monday, shorten it to 45 minutes if you can. Address the critical issues with the global team to get them started and consider smaller breakouts for a project or topic-based conversation. You can conduct, touchpoint meetings of 1/2 hour throughout the week and have a weekly wrap on Friday to celebrate success, provide support, and prepare for Monday's call.

For these meetings, you are Air Traffic Control, so take control. Start the session early. Welcome everyone as they join. Encourage chat in's to share a weekend story or what's on their mind. Call on people! Don't say, "who wants to start?" which inevitably ends up in awkward silence, then a few people talking over each other, then apologies, then awkward silence again. Take control, let people know you're about to call on them, then do it.

Create team and project communication channels owned by the people. In an office, we talk around the cooler or stop by someone's cube for conversation. You can recreate this on any number of tools, whether it's MS Teams, Slack, Zoom, or another App. Set your team up with tools so they can ask questions and share comments throughout their workday without having to craft an email or make a call. You can make it personal by allowing teams to name the streams according to mutual interests. For instance, I was once part of the "Millenium Falcon Cockpit" which was a cross-functional team of four people (Leah, Han, Chewy, Luke) working on an IT solution. We all had "call signs," which were a combination of real and Star Wars character. If you're curious, I was Dan Solo. It made it fun. People even got a little into character during calls. It was better than, Joint LMS Key Stakeholder Functionality Enhancement Channel. (what a snooze fest)

The added benefit to streams is you can poke your head in and see what your team is talking about to provide support, encouragement, or guidance where necessary.

Keep regular open office hours. All the tools I've mentioned previously enable you to virtually open and close your "office" door. Let your team know if they need to have a conversation. They are welcome just to ring your office. Every team I've ever worked with knew from the get-go if the "dot" is green I'm available. If the dot is "yellow," I was thinking, and they should shoot me a chat. If the dot is "red," I was focused elsewhere, so if it was an emergency, text me.

The function replaces the meet-up at the water cooler or grabbing a cup of joe.

Show in addition to tell. Whenever you can - show, show, show. Words alone are ineffective enough even in a live environment, so screen share, send a screenshot, take a picture, send a video, draw it on the whiteboard, role-play it, whatever! Whenever and wherever, you can incorporate visuals to support the conversation. NO, you do not need awesome PowerPoints! In fact, I would encourage a minimalist approach. Visuals lead to clarity. Clarity leads to a shared understanding. There are several great tools in the applications mentioned which enable a visual sharing approach.

These are just a few simple and effective techniques that can lead to a productive and even joyful experience with remote teams. I'll end with these last two overarching thoughts.

Patience. There will be some on your team who pick this up quickly and others who struggle. Exercise patients and encourage those who excel in bringing others along in a constructive manner.

Be the leader your people need. In times of significant disruption, crisis, and turmoil, people need leaders more than ever. Some will need calming influence, "if we work together we'll get through this and be better than we were before." others need confident guidance, "let's go this direction!" and others just might need a firmer approach, "don't beat around a bush ain't got no leaves on it." The point is, your usual approach to leading your team might not be as effective in our current climate, so prepare yourself to make necessary adjustments.

I hope you've found these lessons learned helpful. If you have your thoughts to add, please do so in the comments so we can all benefit. Stay safe. Stay calm. We'll get through this together.