How to Shift Your Management Style & Lead a Successful Remote Team
How you manage your team varies greatly depending on the size of your company and the location of your teammates, as well as, your own personal management style. When all or part of your team is virtual, there are natural adjustments you will make to your in-house management approach. Your first instinct may be to try and tighten the reigns to compensate for the lack of person-to-person contact with your team, but we find that often the opposite is what works best.
Here are two steps you can take to start adapting your management style and ensure a successful working relationship with your remote team.
1. Have Confidence In Your Remote Team
Working with remote employees requires trust and confidence that they will do their jobs on time and on task. Successful virtual companies swap micromanagement and the overseer mentality for a workplace that manages performance and results, not tasks. More on that to come in a later post in this series.
Developing this management style begins by setting clear expectations with your teammates from the start. When doing so, assign specific tasks and explain in detail what you are looking for, with examples if needed. Set deadlines and then keep the lines of communication open to support questions that may come up along the way.
As a manager, it is important to encourage your team and let them know you are confident in their abilities. This can be as simple as when you assign them a higher level task, you let them know that you are doing so because you trust them. And, when you reach notable milestones, don’t forget to provide feedback and reward your team for a job well done!
2. Champion the Right Systems
Good communication and a sense of unity among remote employees is critical as is having the right systems in place to facilitate it. Adopting or creating the appropriate processes for your business requires some up front thinking and action on your part but will serve your business well in the long run. Well implemented systems help create ease for onboarding, influence decision-making, resolve conflict, and encourage creativity.
If the way your team currently works isn’t conducive to remote work, an important first step is taking a good look at your systems. Finding new ways to do things that are easily transferrable to virtual work will help you expand your operations.
Once your processes are in place, it is up to you to be the champion for your team and to really push them to use these systems and processes. This is a true mindset shift, not just a task, and it’s important for everyone on your team to be on the same page. Team performance depends on it.
Remote teams require different leadership than traditional in-office teams. But with a few shifts in management mentality, you will be able to leverage all the benefits of remote workers — top notch talent, cost savings, and scalability. You will also find these shifts in your management approach will help you become an overall more well rounded manager, for not just remote teams but in-house teams as well.
Need help building your remote team? Companies that partner with us to grow their tech teams or our partner Worldwide101 for business-grade virtual assistance benefit from our experience building our own successful companies and helping others do the same.
This is part of a series offering strategies and tips to best leverage a remote team for your business. You may also be interested in:
How to Scale Your Business Using a Remote Team
Maximize Your Remote Team Performance: Focus on Deliverables Over Attendance
How to Create a Strong Culture With Your Long Distance Employees
3 Tips for Creating Solid Processes to Support Your Remote Team
Essential Tools for Remote Team Collaboration & Engagement
The Benefits of Embracing A Flexible Work Schedule With Your Remote Workforce
