Leading Remote Teams

Five strategies managers can use to help teams be successful during — and after — the COVID-19 pandemic

The eCornell “Leading Remote Teams: navigating the COVID-19 Crisis” webinar on March 25, 2020 was packed with excellent resources for managers. It’s an hour long webinar that you can watch again on the Cornell ILR Executive Education website. Cornell faculty experts provided strategies for leaders to help them “rise to the challenge of leading remote teams, and keeping them engaged and productive in these uncertain times.”

My takeaways from the webinar (as well as my own specific tooling and resource suggestions) are below.

1. Help your team maintain social connection

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One of the challenges that we face when our teams are entirely remote is that we no longer have a shared day-to-day experience of work. We lack a shared reality. Elisabeth Mannix notes that, “The more physically distant we become — the more separate our days are — the more socially distant we can become.” Overtime, this can affect levels of trust and team morale. Our lack of a shared experience means we are more likely to make personal inferences (e.g. he didn’t send me that document because he’s lazy) rather than situational inferences (e.g. he didn’t send me that document because his internet connection was down).

What strategies can mangers use to help a team maintain social connection?

• Create an online gathering place for your team (e.g. slack, Microsoft Teams, GCmessage, etc.) and model using it for social connection as well as work.
• Practice perspective getting more than perspective sharing. Regularly ask your team to share their thoughts. Do this before you share your own.
• Ask your team to share pictures and stories about their current circumstances 1–2 times a week. For instance, prep the team (yourself included!) to share a picture of something they did on the weekend, something they’re finding joy in, and something they’re worried about.

2. Go slow to go fast.

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Most teams moved from being in person teams, or teams that had a few distributed team members to teams that were entirely distributed in a matter of days. This is not the ideal way to begin teleworking — i.e. completely unprepared, with no clear agreements in place, no thought about necessary tools, and no childcare.

What strategies can managers use to set their teams up for success in the current circumstances?

• A best practice of distributed teams is to begin by first developing a team charter or operating plan. This document can help your team set norms, and practices that will guide you, and help ensure you avoid situations that might create distrust. (Mural has a good blog post about how to do this.) This is a living document. Commit to collaboratively refreshing it 2–4 times a year.
• Communicate more frequently to ensure your message reaches your team. Consider daily communication by instant message, or (if your team’s schedule allows) daily check in meetings using the agile approach.
• Use simple tools to reiterate your messages, and ensure they are available to team members even if you’re not. This could be as simple as a Google doc, MS Teams doc, or an instant messaging channel dedicated to these messages.

3. Enable working asynchronously as much as possible….

Each team member’s life is going to be different, but all will be grappling with the new circumstances they find themselves in. This may include anxiety and stress due to the global pandemic, the strain of social distancing, inadequate tools, a lack of childcare, sickness, etc. One of the ways workers are dealing with their circumstances is by working asynchronously when they are able to find the necessary mental and physical conditions. For managers, this means that all team members will not work during core business hours, and you will need to think critically about how best to use the time you do have online together.

What strategies can managers use to make working asynchronously work for the team?

• Tell your team members you trust them, and that you know the current circumstances are challenging. Reach out to team members to have open conversations about their circumstances, and better support them.
• Use asynchronous techniques for updating on projects and files. We don’t need to meet to provide work updates, but it is important that team members have a sense of what individuals are working on, and how the team is progressing on their priorities. Consider using a kanban board (lots of options for virtual tools: trello, Monday, asana, etc.), a shared word document or shared excel file to do this.
• Consider moving to a Results Only Work Environment, or a management methodology that clearly signals to your team what is important to you (i.e. results over time in the office).

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4. …and recognize when it’s essential to work synchronously.

There are times when it is important for teams to work together, to have all the team’s brainpower dedicated simultaneously. The advice of Elizabeth Mannix and Diane Burton of Cornell is that, when your team’s synchronous time is limited, managers should reserve team meetings for problem solving on tough problems, and creative time together.

What are strategies and tools to use for taking best advantage of a team’s synchronous time?

• Work virtually to set a meeting time that works for all team members. Every member of the team (including the manager) should be flexible on timing, and acknowledge that some meetings might need to happen outside core business hours in the current circumstances.
• Use an online brainstorming tool that allows you to take advantage of everyone’s brain at the same time. (A number of federal public servants are using Miro, Microsoft Teams, or Google Suite for this. Mashable has a round-up of other online brainstorming softwares, some of which have paywalls.)
• When you meet, ensure you have a clear facilitator to manage the transitions and technology, state clear questions, and summarize responses at regular intervals.

5. An empowering leadership approach is essential.

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In these times, managers who embrace an empowering leadership approach will find that their teams perform well and feel supported. This is in contrast with managers who embrace a command and control or micromanagement approach, who will find team motivation and morale will suffer. Emphasize coaching and connection between yourself and your team members, and between team members themselves.

What are strategies I can use that will demonstrate I am an empowering leader?

• Develop a rapport with each of your team members. Brad Bell’s research at Cornell indicates that teleworker success is most correlated with a strong rapport with a manager. This is something that you — the manager — can impact by spending time supporting, coaching and in dialogue with each of your staff.
• Practice inclusive leadership, ensuring all perspectives are heard, and team members are enabled to work in ways that work for them.
• Be aware of the three types of conflict: task conflict (who does what), interpersonal conflict, and “bosses” conflict (how will we do the work). Look for signals of latent conflict, and seek to address it.
• Never let silence go. If you hear silence on a videoconference or teleconference, open a space to determine what it is about (e.g. conflict, confusion, distrust, etc.) and how you or the team can move past it.

Finally, all of the eCornell experts indicated multiple times that this kind of leadership — suddenly 100% remote, and in the context of a global emergency — is a harder kind of leadership than leaders have had to do previously. There is a real tension between our need to keep work going to meet operational requirements and to provide a sense of normalcy and routine, and, at the same time, in a context in which people have more complicated lives. In this context, we can expect to make mistakes, and we should be gracious with ourselves and our teams as we learn and grow.

Cet article est également disponible en francais.