3 tips for remote managers
How can I effectively manage my team if I am not in the same room? I bet a lot of managers new to remote work asked themselves this question during the COVID lockdown. Indeed, being in the same room at the same time provides a lot of shortcuts:
- you can easily broadcast information to everyone
- you can hear conversations between team members
- you can easily see when someone is struggling
- you can quickly sit down next to a team member to help solve a problem
- you can easily have casual conversations next to the coffee machine
So what should you do when your team is remote?
Tip #1: write everything down
If you can no longer rely on oral communication to easily share information, then you have to move everything to a written format. It is actually a good thing, because written information is much easier to re-use in the future!
As a manager, you should lead by example and switch to a “write first, talk later if needed” mindset. Sometimes, “talk first, then write to share with everyone” is good too, for instance by sending a written recap after a problem solving video call.
At Inato, we use Notion to store and organize our collective knowledge. In the tech department in particular, we store a lot of information in the form of “decision records”, explaining why a decision was made, and “standards”, explaining how to efficiently perform a recurring action.
Tip #2: schedule rituals for group activities
Group activities won’t spontaneously happen: you will have to make them happen. You want to watch your team members as they work, to identify learning opportunities? Schedule a weekly shadow session. You want to have casual conversations to connect with members from other teams? Schedule a random biweekly coffee break.
At Inato, the engineering team meets once a week to talk about various topics: a tricky bug fixed recently, a new release of React... Of course, we also write bug post mortems in Notion, cf tip#1.
Tip #3: meet in real life
All that being said, don’t forget to regularly gather your team at the same place at the same time, for either work or non-work activities. There is no replacement for seeing each other face-to-face.
At Inato, this is the part that I neglect the most, probably because I already regularly see colleagues by commuting to the office. Fortunately, our office manager Laura organizes team building events for each team once a quarter.
Take away
Managing remotely takes away a lot of shortcuts available when everyone is onsite. As a manager, it means you need to take a more pro-active stance instead of simply reacting to what is happening in the office.
If you want to go further, check out this guide from one of the pioneers of remote work:
