Tips for keeping your remote team aligned and motivated
Civic Eagle is a remote-first company, meaning every single employee works from their home office, neighborhood coffee shop, or local co-working space — we don’t have a dedicated central office.
Building our [remote] team over the last couple of years has been challenging. Casual conversations in passing, social outings, high fives — the bonds created through physical proximity aren’t possible when you’re remote…but those bonds matter. Those moments create trust and camaraderie within your team, both of which play an important role in keeping everyone aligned, motivated, and flexible. So the question is, how can team leaders build trust and inspire togetherness when the methods of connecting are video chats and Slack? Here are three ways we do it at Civic Eagle:
Celebrate small victories, asynchronously
It’s critical that your team celebrates (and acknowledges) small victories. Did your engineering team squash a bug during their sprint that was causing a lot of issues? Did sales re-sign an important customer? Those wins are important and they need to be acknowledged, but at the same time they aren’t significant enough to call an All-Hands meeting. At Civic Eagle, we created a slack channel and whenever we have one of these small victories, someone posts a message, shares what it was, and we all celebrate that win. Remember, this is asynchronous so at any time of the day (or week) team members are celebrating that win.
Emphasize transparency
Your remote team has to be transparent — there is no such thing as too much information (from a business sense) shared. Lost an important customer? Share that with the entire team (not just sales and not just leadership). A focus and commitment to company transparency will create a culture of individual transparency and vulnerability that will exponentially increase trust within your team.
Social time before and after video conference meetings
Start and end your video conference meetings with some social time. Leave time for your team to check in, share how their day or week is going, laugh and enjoy each others company. At Civic Eagle 10% of our meeting time goes towards being social and we use both casual and structured social time before and after meetings. Casual social time often times leads to laughs and fun moments, whereas our structured social time encourages vulnerability and openness. Experiment with both and you’ll find the right balance for your team.
To be an effective remote team, trust, teamwork, and alignment are the difference between average performance and excellent performance. Be creative and don’t be scared to try something new.
If you work in government relations, advocacy, public policy, or are a lobbyist, check out Enview by Civic Eagle to learn how it can help you and your policy team stay connected more effectively as you do your work remotely.
