Managing a remote team.
Guidance for local government managers in changing times.
<This is a follow up post to Teams Working Remotely. If you haven’t read that yet, start there.>
Now is your time to lead.
As managers, we serve as resources and advocates for our teams. We exist to enable their success. Our rapid transition to remote work creates a massive challenge for our organization. It is also an unprecedented opportunity for managers to transform how our organization works for our community. As managers, we must transition to remote work ourselves and support our team adopting new ways of working.
Now part two — managing a remote team.
As a manager of remote workers, you have the responsibility for modelling the behavior of successful remote work (including lots of forgiveness as we all make mistakes!) and helping your team transition into this new environment.
As a manager, you are expected to:
- Hold regular structured check-ins with the full group and each team member individually.
- Set clear expectations for tasks and projects.
- Make explicit the guidelines for how your team works.
1. Regular structured check-ins — individual and group
Set up regular structured 1:1 check ins with each of your direct reports, as well as group check ins to provide your whole team with the opportunity to see each other. Use video for your meetings.
1:1 Check-Ins
1:1 Check-ins create space to connect and problem solve together. Make sure you have recurring hour long 1:1s set up with each of your direct reports. Choose a cadence, such as weekly on Fridays, that works for your team. Do not cancel these 1:1s. As with all meetings during remote work, use video.
Before the meetings, you and your staff should prepare and review a shared agenda document. Put a link to this document directly into the calendar invitation so that both of you can find it when you need it. Agree on a template that works best for you. Here is one suggested template I’ve found helpful. It is the responsibility of your team to fill out the 1:1 meeting template before the meeting. It is your responsibility to review the document and use it to pull out the key items for discussion. Drafting and reviewing in advance helps both you and the staff member come prepared to engage in meaningful conversation grounded in shared information.
TechTip: You can collaborate live in Word documents or in OneNote. OneNote is helpful for serving as a shared notebook with a record of all past 1:1 check in agendas.
Use these meetings to:
- connect with your staff and understand what’s going on in their life. As always, begin by simply checking in. There is a human on the other side of that computer screen (and a human behind yours as well). It is your responsibility to create safe space for team to share what’s going on. This is your time to practice active listening and appreciative inquiry.
- reinforce priorities, guidance, and ways of working. In the pre-read, your staff will outline their priorities, anticipate any distractions from those priorities, and let you know what they’re not getting to yet. The 1:1 meeting itself provides an opportunity for you to make any adjustments to those priorities and to explain the reasoning behind any change.
- probe deeper into issues and troubleshoot issues together. Your team may be struggling with a project specific issue or simply with setting a new routine and figuring out how to use all this technology.
- answer questions and share context so they can understand how their work fits into the greater whole and provide personal encouragement to reinforce what is working
- hold space for two-way feedback to encourage continuous growth
These check ins are not for providing updates on projects or tasks. Providing updates in a meeting leaves you and the whole team in the dark between updates. Use shared project or task trackers like Microsoft Planner or shared documents to keep project progress visible and transparent — creating a shared written record of expectations, progress, and results.
Team Check-ins
At least once a week, make sure your team has dedicated time to see each other and connect. Use video.
Use these regular team meetings to process the last week, prepare for the coming week, and set and reinforce explicit group norms. Providing processing space for the team to reflect on how they are doing as a team. This is an opportunity for them to problem solve together around the difficult issues of working as a group in a remote setting. We’re all doing lots of adapting right now and will make many mistakes. Model the grace you expect of your own team. Share your own mistakes. Have some fun! Reinforce the bright spots of what is working. Praise publicly and often the concrete behaviors you see that reinforce the desired culture. Culture is built in action. Take on the role of facilitator to ensure everyone has an opportunity to share and be heard.
Especially during the COVID-19 response, it is important to recognize what’s going on outside our work. From social isolation to balancing dynamic family situations, we all need a little extra support right now. Help your team provide that support to each other.
As with all meetings, use a shared document to take notes, document decisions, and align on follow up.
2. Set clear expectations for tasks and projects
As a manager, it is your responsibility to set and ensure understanding of expectations for tasks and project completion. While many people may help, make sure there is always one person delegated the responsibility and authority to produce the desired result. Have your team repeat back what they hear. We all different perspectives on the world. “Many” may mean 5 to one person and 50 to another person.
In a remote setting, written documentation is critical. It allows you to cut down on confusion and meetings, and frees the team (and you!) to get work done when it makes the most sense to get work done.
There is no such thing as multi-tasking; rather, people who think they are multi-tasking are instead switching rapidly between tasks. This creates that feeling that you were busy all day but didn’t get anything done. Get clear on what needs to get done, assign the tasks, and step back to allow the work to happen.
TechTip: A shared Microsoft Planner creates visibility for you and your whole team into who is doing what and by when. It allows everyone to update and show progress (or delay) without a mess of emails flying around asking about the status of any one task or project. Attach the relevant documents to a task card. Customize the buckets to match your workflow. Take responsibility for managing and prioritizing the backlog and assigning each task to an individual teammate. Take what works for you from Agile, scrum, or Kanban methods to produce results effectively in a remote setting.
3. Make explicit the guidelines for how your team works
You are responsible for how your group works. Make the guidelines for how your team works explicit — both creating written documentation and reinforcing in team meetings.
Written documentation should be always visible, easy to find, and fluid. Review regularly with your team. Open the guidelines to their input as we all try out different ways of working.
Your guidelines should match your team. To the extent possible, support autonomy and free your team to produce agreed upon results in a supportive atmosphere. The communication norms you set will help prevent the burnout and productivity loss of ‘always on’ culture.
Tech Tip: Create a tab in your team’s Microsoft Teams General channel for holding your team’s ways of working and any other guidance a team may want to reference as they get things done. The ‘Wiki’ can be a great place for this.
What works for you and your team? What barriers are you hitting? Share what works, questions, or barriers with innovation@montgomerycountymd.gov and we’ll address them in future posts.
Further Reading for Managers of Remote Teams:
A Guide to Managing Your Newly Remote Workers (HBR) https://hbr.org/2020/03/a-guide-to-managing-your-newly-remote-workers
Template and Guide for Productive 1:1s (From The Management Center): http://www.managementcenter.org/tools/check-ins/
Lighthouse Guide to 1:1s https://getlighthouse.com/blog/one-on-one-meetings-template-great-leaders/#inthemeeting
If you’re not doing 1:1s already, some help getting started https://getlighthouse.com/blog/how-to-start-one-on-ones-your-teams/
Some tips for running efficient remote meetings in government https://18f.gsa.gov/2016/12/14/how-to-run-an-efficient-meeting/
Tech Help:
Working Remotely with O365 Tools
Getting Started with Microsoft Teams
Getting Started with Microsoft Planner
Microsoft Teams Quick Tips from Lynda.com (fast and useful videos)
For Further Reading for all Remote Workers:
https://increment.com/teams/a-guide-to-distributed-teams/ — Read the section on Communication for a helpful guide between synchronous and asynchronous communications (or when we all talk together vs when we
https://18f.gsa.gov/2015/10/15/best-practices-for-distributed-teams/ A government team that is remote first!
