Kevin Rockmann of George Mason University School of Business: Five Things You Need to Know To Successfully Manage a Remote Team

Emphasize the fact that everybody has their own unique struggles / challenges / work-life issues. The goal is the product or performance not necessarily what it took to get there. In other words, it’s less important to have constant meetings or instantaneous emails. Groups should figure out how they best work together and create their own paths forward. Keeping this focus on the outcome allows individuals to have autonomy to craft their own path.

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

Kevin Rockmann is the founder and first editor of the High Quality Connections website, which publicizes the science of positive and productive relationships at work.

He is also the director of the PhD Program at the George Mason University School of Business.

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 am a professor of management at George Mason University’s School of Business and study everything I can about relationships in organizations. My dissertation data was actually on teleworkers, a population I got interested in studying because at the time, my dad was forced into remote work for the first time in his career.

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

When I was interviewing a remote manager in the Bay Area, she invited me to her home rather than meeting me at the office. I was happy to oblige. I showed up and realized she never wore anything other than pajamas to work. It was a successful, but a slightly awkward, interview.

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?

None.

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

When asking them to take on a new assignment, make sure they tell you where the time is going to come from. I call this a portfolio view of time management.

Portfolio view of time management is the concept that each employee is managing a portfolio of individual and group projects / efforts / initiatives. As a result, individuals must allocate a fixed amount of time / effort across all of these efforts. If, for example, someone takes on a new client, that time must come from something else: another client, personal work, leisure time, family time, etc. Likewise, if someone wants to train for a marathon, that training time has to come from somewhere else.

However, both individuals and organizations struggle with managing portfolios. On the organizational side, I encourage managers to not only manage employees’ motivations / goals / etc. but also to manage their portfolios. That is, if a manager asks an employee to take on something else, there needs to be a discussion about where that time / effort is coming from. Without this jobs grow for individuals that are strong performers (leading to stress / burnout / work-life balance problems). This is of course even MORE of an issue when there are significant power issues (e.g., marginalized / underrepresented employee groups, junior people that don’t feel like they can say “no,” etc.)

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?

None

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?

Relationships. Teams thrive on productive relationships. I’m not talking about just working together or passing items back and forth, I’m talking about relationships defined by trust, respect, recognition, feedback, and honesty. While there is evidence that teams who build these relationships before going remote MAINTAIN this when remote, it is very hard to create these relationships after going remote.

Information / Coordination / Learning. Technology simply gets in the way and can create frustrations.

Lean forms of communication. Emails can be interpreted in any number of ways, and without a strong relationship, misunderstandings can easily occur.

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

· Go for walks, meet outside, get to know individuals (AND NOT JUST IN MEETINGS). Use “transactional” or “taskwork” time efficiently so that employees have a chance to build strong relationships. Find common goals / similarities / missions / even adversaries! All of these bring people together.

· Create contracts / rules for how we are going to work and when. Outline what’s acceptable and not so there are not hard feelings.

· Train individuals not to communicate over email when there is room for interpretation or when emotions are running hot.

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?

Ask them what they think. Feedback sessions should be dialogues, not one-way conversations. This is even MORE important during virtual sessions. It’s better to tell the person — “I’m going to think about what you said and put down some thoughts of my own and then send you some feedback so that you can process on your own and then we can get back together, ok?” This protects their identity, allows them time to process, and preserves the relationship.

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

Have others read it; make sure the employee knows it is coming. Be specific and objective, not vague and subjective.

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?

Emphasize the fact that everybody has their own unique struggles / challenges / work-life issues. The goal is the product or performance not necessarily what it took to get there. In other words, it’s less important to have constant meetings or instantaneous emails. Groups should figure out how they best work together and create their own paths forward. Keeping this focus on the outcome allows individuals to have autonomy to craft their own path.

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?

· Meet for walks / chats

· Meeting-free times

· Incentivizing detaching from work (e.g., if you write emails on the weekend you’ll be sanctioned)

· Show how ideas are considered and put into practice

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. :-)

See q. 4. I’ve written about this and taught this, and managers really struggle helping their employees do this. They ask and ask for time and effort without talking with employees about where that time and effort are going to come from.

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

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird. Understanding others is central to relationships, leadership, motivation, negotiation, conflict resolution, and so on. It’s at the heart of so much of what I do and yet this idea is quite difficult for many. When we see the rewards reaped from taking such an approach though, it is all worth it.

Thank you for these great insights!