Tips for managing a remote team

[EggCurls]

I've recently been seconded into a new role to set up and manage a new team. We are working on a project, which is high profile, target driven and with lots of scrutiny.

Some of my team are already doing the job, some are moving across from other teams, and some are entirely new to the company. They have different skills, and different levels of experience.

We all work from home, and are spread around the country.

So far I've had one to one meetings with each of them (online), and I've arranged a team meet up in a couple of weeks so that we can all get together in person. We will go through our team workplan and set targets and agree how to share out the tasks.

Are there any tips on how best to manage such a diverse team - anything I should be doing that I haven't yet?

Decide on a structure to make files/tasks visible to everyone who needs them.

For example we have a team sharepoint site, all work is stored within a document library on that sharepoint site and access is given to the team members based on what they will need to collaborate on.

Agree some rules around how collaboration will work, do you want them to track changes or just add comments to the main document owner.

Set in place regular team meetings and individual 1:1s, keep the meeting length reasonable, don't put in a 2 Hr weekly call if you don't have 2 hrs of stuff to talk about. Make sure you have an agenda and a structure to the team meeting, we have a shared OneNote with for team meetings and communications, 1 page is a table with:

Date of meeting
Agenda item
Added by

So people can add anything they want to discuss onto the list between meetings and we can make sure it's discussed

Another page is minutes, agreements and actions, really high level capture of what was discussed, what was agreed and the actions taken out of the meeting. That way anyone who misses it can catch up.

Encourage people to have coffee breaks and to discuss non work stuff, just like they would in the kitchen in an office, we'll often use a bit of the team meeting just ti catch up with each other as people - how was your holiday, do anything nice, plans for Halloween/Xmas....

Thank you, great advice.
I plan to have weekly team meetings - good idea to keep them short and focussed.

I use OneNote for my own work, but I've never used a shared version. That sounds great.

Cameras on for online meetings. I hate it but it makes a big difference.

Definitely cameras on. People often seem very vacant when they aren't and I wonder if they are as engaged.

If you pick Mondays for meetings you'll miss loads in the spring through Bank Holidays.

Sharepoint is fab. So is Whatsapp

I work in a very dispersed team, and my biggest tip is picking up the phone (well, teams call) and having a culture where people actually speak to each other. This works as you never speak to each other without a quick exchange of conversation, and there is much less scope for misunderstandings of just playing email ping pong where a 5 minute convo will sort it out. Encourage collaborative working- we find working on a document together makes it so much faster even when you might think the person tasked should be able to do it by themselves.

We use Asana for allocating & keeping track of tasks. It makes it much easier to see who’s doing what & where they’re up to.

Following as in a very similar boat with new job

Weekly team meeting on Monday mornings to do a retrospective on the previous week's activities

shared MS One Note for the team to capture notes to talk through and highlight escalations (what we call "worry beads") so everyone feels supported.

no blame culture, being collaborative and supportive of each other. We don't get any backbiting or snidey comments, everyone is professional and friendly.

we celebrate success regularly, just by mentioning something we're proud of (not forced, spontaneously and only when we choose to). I regularly call out accomplishments and give genuine thanks for what people achieve.

lots of working in twos and threes, so there are no single points of failure.

the above has created a very strong team culture. I have very little sickness absence (which can be a tell tale sign of things not being right). When a colleague was recently taken ill, I kept in touch with them proactively and they returned to work a lot sooner than I ever expected them to. I put them on reduced hours and they proactively wanted to get back to Ft hours after 4 weeks as they felt supported and not under pressure to return.

it's the small details that keep a team happy. Nothing that needs to be shouted from the rooftops, just the glue that keeps people together and feeling like their job is meaningful and valued.

Much of what has already been said plus I suggested my team set up a WhatsApp group that I wasn’t on - I don’t want to be involved in every discussion or decision. Too stressful and I don’t micromanage.

I often but not always put in a 1hr meeting in at 4.30 / 5pm on a Friday and tell my team I’ll be there with a glass of wine / a G&T but there’s zero obligation to join or stay longer than a quick hello or goodbye if they’d rather kick start their weekend with their family etc. Usually get a 90% turnout and it’s nice to be social together - we used to go down the pub in my industry so this is a way of keeping that.

one 10 minutes (scrum) meeting with cameras on.
there are lots of task tracking tool that you can use. look up 'kan ban'.
so use that and go through it.

one weekly all team meeting to discuss any issues. and one fortnightly meeting with all for a 'show and tell' type progress report.

do you know anything about agile? if not take a course or read up about it. you don't need to follow the whole thing but the structure is good, especially if you have more projects running in parallel.

As someone who was managed remotely in a small team, don't put a weekly team meeting in the diary for 9am on a Monday morning if that's when you start work - give people some time to allow them to read emails, etc. That 9am meeting was the bane of my working life and was never used very constructively. Plus people are generally more receptive around mid morning.

I'll add I work in a global organisation so would have emails from the Friday from the US and from before my start time on the Monday from colleagues in Europe.

Agree with everything written so far, except mostly when I'm managing remote teams we're doing software development and so we have a very short meeting every morning (the stand up) about work done yesterday, work planned for today, any blockers. That might not suit your team but I do think very regular contact is important.

We used Slack but I'd encourage you to do the same in Teams - Slack comes with a 'random' channel which is where people can post funnies and nonsense, the kind of social stuff you'd get if you were all in an office together. So I'd add a random channel, esp if the team don't all know each other/aren't used to being in a remote team.

Definitely encourage people to be in contact with each other, minimise the use of email for conversations just within the team.

Shared task management is essential - some good tools mentioned above, although you probably have Microsoft Planner as well, which integrates directly into Teams.

regarding cameras: our policy is camera on for the daily 10 min meeting.
for all other meetings, camera on for the greeting at the beginning and then people are free to switch it off unless speaking.

Lots of people have already said it but if you can, a short (15 min) daily call so people can raise any queries with whoever they need to ask. But also just to have some non-work chat and get to know each other, feel part of each other's days.

Flexibility such as encouraging going for a walk and dialling in to meetings (if not presenting or needing to look at detail on screen).

Publish your team structure and responsibilities somewhere shared so it's easy to find the right contact, for you now and for new starters in the future.

I work in a very diverse team, we have team members in US, India, Scotland, and London.

What works week for us is a daily "placeholder" booked suitable for all timezones where are can meet. If we have nothing to say or insanely busy we cancel, sometimes we have it and just catch up/chat, sometimes we use it to bounce ideas of each other or ask for help.

We usually have it 2-3 times a week and it is a good place to just connect with no pressure. If we connect and no one wants to chat or have anything to discuss we just end the call early. We are a pretty close and honest bunch. Our boss usually comes 1-2 meetings a week, but their presence doesn't change the dynamic at all.

Some great suggestions here. I came on to say have an initial meet in person but see you’ve already organised that! Dependent on length of project I’d probably try and do that quarterly to keep relationships topped up. As tempting as it is to fill the whole in person day with work planning I would also build in a non work related getting to know you activity. A lunchtime walk or something fun that builds some rapport and relationship. It is time well spent to then help with any misunderstandings or difficulties later on, and you’re more likely to pick up the phone to someone if you’ve got to know them a bit. Love the pp suggestion of encouraging walking mtgs too with headphones on - well-being check in’s with each other also help build rapport.

He really clear on individual job scopes. In a remote team there is a stronger likelihood of people treading on each others toes, or duplicating work, or the other way round of everyone assuming someone else did it.
Where you can define clear RACI , allocate specific roles to each person. As you’re forming a new team, you’re going to need to really work hard to discover each team members strengths and weaknesses to optimise that with tasks you assign to each. Try hard to differentiate between each role and who is responsible and accountable for what.
Do not do what my boss In US did: someone more junior than me would go to her asking to get involved in something more high profile. She’d agree for them to pick up tasks I wa doing in my very specialised job. And she’d not tell me. First thing I’d know was my client on phone saying “x told me to do it this way” which was almost always incorrect 🤯🤬. It wasted my time, theirs and my boss never really understood why it caused chaos and wasted effort.

clear roles, clear demarcation

also do NOT underestimate the loss of informal networking, what we used to call the “cooler conversations”, those informal snippets and quick chats between colleagues where they get to pick up what is happening both about work they’re on peripheral of, or stuff going on about company. Better known as productive gossip! Where teams are spread geographically or a wfh, this is a massive loss in communication. Maybe encourage your team to have virtual lunches togther just to chat, get to know each other and exchange what they’re working on, hints and tips they’ve found out to do things better, who’s good to network with and all the other stuff you exchange with colleagues while the kettle is brewing.

Other thing that could be very valuable when “forming” and “storming” any new team, whether virtual or not, is a whole team exercise in personality types. I know that these tests are only as good as they are on the day you take them, and have a tendency to pigeon hole people, but actually doing this as a group exercise at same time over say 1/2 day is really helpful in team work and “storming” stage of team development. It really helps all members of team understand who the introverts are, the analyticals, the extroverts, emotives etc. handled carefully by a professional trainer it can help build relationships via a very good shortcut in understand what makes each team member the way they are at work and people respecting that they’re all different.

https://nulab.com/learn/project-management/strengthen-team-using-drucker-exercise-tuckman-model/