Katie McLaughlin: Five Things You Need To Know To Successfully Manage a Remote Team

Giving constructive criticism to any employee is challenging. I don’t believe that it’s easier when you’ve got an in person employee versus a remote employee. But the first thing I would offer is that rarely should constructive criticism be given in written communication. It is important that people hear your tone of voice. The next suggestion I have would be to make a request and ask that it is okay to offer that constructive criticism. Asking for permission to give feedback acknowledges that it may not be an appropriate time for them to receive and hear that feedback. So it is important to say, “Hey, I want to talk with you about some of your work and share some of the things that I’m noticing. Is now a good time?” If they ask for another time, then let them lead the scheduling so that they can be focused to receive your feedback.

As a part of our series about the five things you need to successfully manage a remote team, I had the pleasure of interviewing Katie McLaughlin.

Katie provides Leadership & Culture transformation for mature startups — helping leaders create inclusive cultures, build emotional intelligence, work through their assumptions & biases so they can actually connect with and get the MOST out of their teams. She does this all through interactive, experiential, theatre-based exercises. Her bias for action is HIGH so attendees to her sessions always leave with at least one action item to immediately do to shift something in your behavior, relationships, and company. Working with Katie, you benefit from the powerhouse combo of her theatre background and over 15 years in the heart of business strategy, organizational development, and change management.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. What is your “backstory”?

I left college with loads of theatre training and a passion for sharing the life lessons from theatre with others. But I didn’t quite know how I wanted to share these skills. So I followed some other passions and started my career in nonprofits and education administration. Then I stumbled into the fun world of technology and software startups — where I stayed for the rest of my career. I say “startup” but at the point where I joined these companies, they frequently had more than 150 employees. But they wore the term startup as a badge of honor for how they were moving quickly and looking to create a different kind of company culture.

After spending more than 10 years in technology startups working in people-related roles — from training, talent, sales enablement and change management, I realized that I was leveraging my knowledge of human behavior from my theatre training to build better programs and connect with others. I’ve had success coaching employees, developing managers, and executing training and change management programs that get results. So now in my business McLaughlin Method (www.mclaughlinmethod.com), I help my clients adopt behaviors that will help them connect to and motivate their teams through an application of theatre concepts and exercises.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?

In my early career, I was coaching customer service agents and helping them improve the quality of their calls. I realized very quickly that most people came to coaching sessions extremely defensive, with their walls up, and full of harsh self-criticisms. It shocked me at first. I thought about how I’d need to try to get them to open up to seeing the situation differently. It was in one of those coaching rooms that I had this aha moment connecting the business skill of coaching to my theatre training as an actor. Working with others was something that could be approached like character development and scene study. Identify the intention that I have, and acknowledge that the other person has an intention in that same conversation. We’re each using different tactics to try to get what we want. That was the moment where I realized just how complex and wonderful the learnings are from theatre. And more importantly, that I could share these lessons with others.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

A funny thing that has happened throughout my career is running into the leader or head of the company without knowing who they are. When I did research before starting to work for company, rarely did I look up who the CEO was. Especially since my early career positions didn’t have me working with the CEO. So there were a number of times when that CEO or other senior leader would “pop” into a team meeting or I would encounter them in the elevator and not realize who they were. What I took away from this experience was the realization that very few new hire onboardings include mentions of their senior leadership. There’s just this expectation that people figure out who the senior leaders are by osmosis. This reminded me of just how “invisible” senior leadership can be to the rest of the organization.

What advice would you give to other business leaders to help their employees to thrive and avoid burnout?

Burnout is real. Especially as we’re continuing to adapt to the long-term world of remote work. One of the best ways to avoid burnout is to set boundaries when you are working and taking time off to enjoy things outside of work that you enjoy.

Ok, let’s jump to the core of our interview. Some companies have many years of experience with managing a remote team. Others have just started this, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Can you tell us how many years of experience you have managing remote teams?

I started managing a remote team back in 2017. My team was co-located at our Rhode Island headquarters and I was living in Seattle, Washington. During that time, I both took on a team that already existed and integrated new hires into that team.

Managing a team remotely can be very different than managing a team that is in front of you. Can you articulate for our readers what the five main challenges are regarding managing a remote team? Can you give a story or example for each?

One of the primary challenges of managing a remote team is you have to develop a whole different set of tools for viewing productivity of your team. When you’re managing people in person, you might use casual or implied evidence of performance, like the hours that somebody is at the office, passing by different meetings that they are in, or you see them at their desk, doing productive things. When you’re working remotely, you can’t rely on that casual physical or visual evidence of their productivity.

Another challenge of managing a remote team is your own expectation of what role you play as a manager. In person, you might be used to people flagging you down and saying that they need you. And you might be heavily involved in the day to day and decision making of your team. When working remotely, your team needs to be able to work independently of you. That might feel like you’re not needed by your team. Some managers might try to insert themselves into or control situations.

The third challenge is establishing a genuine connection with your team. So that way they know that they can trust you, that they can speak with you directly about things that are going on, and that they feel like they can approach you because you are now remote. Almost all of our time with our teams is scheduled. It can become very easy for conversations to feel a bit guarded, and for you to have a lot of questions about what might be going on.

The fourth challenge of managing a remote team is communication. And communication probably should be four and five because the communication goes in both directions and has multiple components. So one of the reasons why communication is tough is because you’re not working on the same hours. One of the beauties of remote work is the ability for you and for your team to be able to fit work around their lives. More than likely, your team may not be immediately or readily available when you need them to answer something. Because they may not be immediately available, it doesn’t mean they’re not working. We are so ingrained to expect that our team needs to be immediately available to us. Then a story can start to build in our minds: “what is my team doing?” The other side of communication is that your communication has even more weight. There’s less casual communication and just less communication overall. So you have to be conscientious about the language that you use, the tone that could come across in any written language that you share, and how effectively you are actually communicating with your team. It’s really easy for you to send off a message via slack or whatever your internal messaging system is, and have that be taken the wrong way misinterpreted with the wrong tone.

Based on your experience, what can one do to address or redress each of those challenges?

For measuring or understanding productivity, the best thing is to look at what your team members have accomplished. Look at their results. Their path towards achieving those results shouldn’t be as big of an issue. Set clear goals and outcomes by month and quarter and measure performance against those. Use your 1:1s with your team to understand where they are blocked or how they are approaching a problem so that you can help them find ways to streamline their work.

Take time to consider what role you play for your team now that you are remote. You may want to have discussions with each team member about how involved they need you in their day to day and how their work shifts over time. Then take a fresh look at your own goals to determine where you can be spending your time to get better results for your team as a whole and for your department. It may surprise you where you’ve been spending your time isn’t the best use of your skills!

Genuine connections can take time to build with your team. I recommend setting up standing “office hours” time, where you can drop in and connect about the work that you’re doing and set up casual happy hours or eat lunch together as a team. Investigate some creative team building events to really connect with each other. You can improve your communication to your team by reminding yourself that they cannot hear your tone. Play around with different tools to send video or audio messages so people can hear your tone instead of needing to interpret it through your writing. You can also ask your team for feedback about your communication and how you can improve your connections with each other.

In my experience, one of the trickiest parts of managing a remote team is giving honest feedback, in a way that doesn’t come across as too harsh. If someone is in front of you much of the nuance can be picked up in facial expressions and body language. But not when someone is remote. Can you give a few suggestions about how to best give constructive criticism to a remote employee?

Giving constructive criticism to any employee is challenging. I don’t believe that it’s easier when you’ve got an in person employee versus a remote employee. But the first thing I would offer is that rarely should constructive criticism be given in written communication. It is important that people hear your tone of voice. The next suggestion I have would be to make a request and ask that it is okay to offer that constructive criticism. Asking for permission to give feedback acknowledges that it may not be an appropriate time for them to receive and hear that feedback. So it is important to say, “Hey, I want to talk with you about some of your work and share some of the things that I’m noticing. Is now a good time?” If they ask for another time, then let them lead the scheduling so that they can be focused to receive your feedback.

Start up any feedback conversation by introducing the topic or situation you want to provide feedback on. Ask them to give you their perspective on what happened and how they approached their work. Many times, we are our own worst critic. And we might have already acknowledged or recognized, there’s something here that I can do to improve. When the other person acknowledges and realizes that they have something to improve upon, that makes your job as a manager much easier, where you don’t have to blindside somebody with that feedback.

The next thing I’d recommend when giving constructive feedback to a remote employee is to remind them you’re sharing this feedback with the intent that they take it, make adjustments, and make improvements.

It’s really important, especially with remote employees, but I would say with all employees, that your feedback be factual, and that you do your best to avoid any kind of emotional language within your feedback. Some examples of emotional language to avoid would be: “I was really disappointed,” “I got really frustrated,” or “this made you look unprofessional.” Any of that language could generate a strong reaction from your employee.

We have learned these behaviors of using emotional language, because over time, we have seen it get results where we see people make adjustments. However, this language can be manipulative and traumatic over time. You could also trigger past traumas or past hurt when it comes to workplace feedback. When we’re triggered, we reject feedback.

Can you specifically address how to give constructive feedback over email? How do you prevent the email from sounding too critical or harsh?

Whenever you give feedback in any kind of written form, whether that’s via email or something else, it’s incredibly easy for that to be taken in the wrong way. So I recommend, instead of trying to write out an email, sharing your feedback in a video message, or an audio message if you’re unable to get onto a call with them live. There are a ton of tools out there now that allow you to capture a quick video and voice messages. However, I would recommend that you make every attempt to meet with somebody live.

If you’ve got a team that is all over the world, then you may have to make efforts as a leader to meet up with their schedule, when it makes sense. Establish early on in your relationship set times when you could meet with your employees across various time zones and geolocations. Set up a time that is most likely to line up with their schedule and your schedule for possible conversations. Even if you don’t know that you know that you’re going to need it. But identifying, this is the possible time block that I would love for you to keep free in your calendar. So that way, if we end up needing to have a conversation, we can do that.

Circling back though, I would only encourage you to send written communication or written feedback when the feedback you had for them is about some kind of a written document or resource. Then make that feedback specifically about that work product. For example, if somebody was writing a report or an email. You wanted to provide them feedback on their writing, their tone, their style, their alignment to brand, any of those types of things are actually a decent example for reviewing via email.

If you find yourself writing anything via email, that is about a conversation or about an observation that you had of their work, or maybe observing them leading a meeting or coaching someone, don’t send an email. Feedback for each of those situations usually requires some kind of context. In order to get them to shift their behavior in these settings, you’re going to need them to be more mentally and emotionally on board with taking in that feedback. It is very difficult to ensure that somebody has internalized feedback and is able to make a shift when they feel bad about the feedback they’ve received. If all they’re given is an email, it is too easy for somebody to immediately put a wall up. Your role as a leader is to help somebody to keep those walls from coming up. By giving the feedback live, you can help address any walls that do come up, get them to understand your point of view, and find a motivation in order to shift their behavior.

Can you share any suggestions for teams who are used to working together on location but are forced to work remotely due to the pandemic. Are there potential obstacles one should avoid with a team that is just getting used to working remotely?

If you’re a team that already has established working norms, the important thing is to acknowledge that your work and the way you communicate is going to have to change. Have a transparent conversation with your team and allow them to help come up with some solutions. Some of those solutions include: How are we going to know what each other is working on? How are we going to know when there are shared times that we could be working together on something? What are going to be the best ways for them to receive feedback? All of these types of things could be conversations that you have with your team, because the more that you involve your team in the decision making processes around their work the better engaged they will be in the use of all those tools or solutions you come up with. It’s important to avoid just giving them a slate of new tools or new requirements that they weren’t involved in crafting. Then they don’t understand the why behind the decisions, and they’re going to immediately reject it.

What do you suggest can be done to create a healthy and empowering work culture with a team that is remote and not physically together?

A great way to address this is to cultivate a sense of enthusiasm and positivity to our team. Celebrate their wins (even the small ones) and be intentional with your praise. Send out encouraging messages to them for every job well done. Get to know their attitudes, values, and beliefs. We often get too caught up in focusing on business objectives and analyzing data that we often forget that we’re dealing with humans who have emotions, feelings, and needs. Each employee is different, so getting to know them on an individual level will be key to improving their morale.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I really believe that is at the core of what I am trying to do with my business, McLaughlin Method. I believe that if we were to acknowledge and hold space for people’s entire experience as a human, we’d all probably feel a lot better about ourselves, our families, and the world. I see a lot of hurt people out there, who crave healing and validation. I want everyone to know that they are okay and are doing great.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

One of my favorite quotes is from Augusto Boal, the founder of the theatre techniques I leverage in my business. I’m roughly paraphrasing from memory: “Whatever one human being can do, so can any other human being. Maybe not as well or as prolifically, but it can be done, because we are all human beings.” It continues to remind me of the possibility in myself and in others. We can be so hard on ourselves. Comparing ourselves to others, and using that as evidence that we aren’t good enough. This quote reminds me anything is possible. It helps me change “I can’t” to “I can.”

Thank you for these great insights!