Managing Teams in a Remote Environment

In my career I have had to deal with teams spread all over the country and around the world. Now COVID has forced everyone into this new reality. Even though many companies are returning to commuting and cubicles, some are remaining remote. Below I have shared some techniques I have used to manage remote teams.

Team Meetings: The challenge is to build engagement, a sense of belonging and teamwork. Remote teams don’t have the ability to talk over the cubes or to head to Starbucks to have a brief discussion. I handle this problem in a couple different ways. The first is in the scrum. I take a few minutes for casual discussions in the scrum and talk about sports, the weekend, pets, kids, etc. This adds a human element to the discussion and builds trust and closer relationships as you learn more about each other.

I also conduct cross training meetings. If someone on the team has a particular skill where everyone will benefit. I ask them to present to the team. This builds their confidence, presentation, and leadership skills at the same time improving everyone’s knowledge.

One on One Meetings: I conduct frequent one on one meetings with everyone on the team. This is the employees meeting to discuss anything they want to. I focus mainly on performance and career growth. I give feedback on what is working and what needs improvement. Communicate with them honestly with a focus on improving their skills going forward. This will make the end of year review easier because they will already know what to expect. I also add a personal touch. I read somewhere you should know at least two personal things about everyone on your team. If you don’t you are not communicating effectively. This should happen automatically if you follow the proceeding meeting points.

Project Management: Most environments are fast paced today with phased implementations, short time frames and critical due dates. This means you need to review your task list frequently. Today stand-up scrums are the norm. There are several tools available to help with project management. These tools will have sprints, Kanban’s, swim lanes, tickets, due dates, project comments and the like. Walk through your tickets frequently. Review each ticket due in the current sprint to see if everything is on track. If something is off track schedule a meeting to address the issues. Don’t communicate by email outside the ticket. The emails will be lost in the shuffle and you will lose valuable history about the task.

Performance Monitoring: I monitor performance first and foremost using the project tickets and assigning difficulty levels to each. The comments posted on the tickets and hours recorded are important indicators to review. If you estimate a ticket should take 10 hours and you see it taking considerably more, use the ticket comments to determine what happened. If needed, call a post-production meeting to review the ticket and discuss any potential problems with that task. Do this in a positive non accusatory manner. The goal is to learn, not to punish. Performance issues will be discussed in the one-on-one meeting.

Summary: Most of what I have documented here are normal management roles and responsibilities. The real difference with a remote team is you need to focus much more on communication and building trust and solidarity. The second big area is reviewing the performance. I don’t look at when someone signs on, signs off or how many minutes they took for lunch. I look at the raw performance your project management software should help you monitor. I have also found not everyone has the self-control to work from home. Some people can get easily sidetracked with issues around the house. Be honest with them in the one on one. Tell them to find a quiet space away from the distractions.

If you have any questions about these postings. Please reach out to me. I am happy to help.

Regards,

Scott Matson
Scott.Matson@CRM-Whiz.com
Connect with me on linked in