Advice on managing a team remotely
Discussion
I manage a bunch of guys who I rarely see but we talk regularly over the phone and we have Googledocs set up as an informal shared drive along with the official shared drive. We're a part of a bigger project with over 20 people working all over the country. 3 are in one office and another 4 are a couple of hours away in another office. The rest of us work from home and everything seems to tick along ok and our client is more than happy with our performance.
Managers and team leads have a conference call once a fortnight and every 3 months we meet up for a day at one of the offices and that is pretty much it.
I think it depends on how much you value personal interaction and whether you personally are suited to working remotely from your team. Problems of communication and collaboration are easily overcome with technology but if you think you need to spend time together then it might be an issue.
Managers and team leads have a conference call once a fortnight and every 3 months we meet up for a day at one of the offices and that is pretty much it.
I think it depends on how much you value personal interaction and whether you personally are suited to working remotely from your team. Problems of communication and collaboration are easily overcome with technology but if you think you need to spend time together then it might be an issue.
I’m assuming they’re your team that you’re responsible for (as opposed to belonging to someone else but with some responsibility to your outputs).
If so, there are many factors to consider, including:
- Are they currently meeting/exceeding their mandate? This helps determine how often you will need to be involved to help them along.
- Are your direct reports good? This helps determine both how much you can delegate (to free you up) and how good they will be at leading their own teams.
- How important is it to them seeing you regularly? ‘Visible Leadership ‘ is an important component of high performing teams (don’t get it mixed up with micromanagement!). This is why you’ll maybe need to delegate more to free you up to deliver that visible leadership.
- Whenever there’s something being rationed (in this case, office space), think of your staff first and yourself last.
- Re office space; I’d always look for a way to maximise your current space rather than split the team up. could you all not hot desk or move to flexible working over a longer day to spread out the demand?
In summary, my experience of leading dispersed teams is that it is a challenge to do really well. It takes much more time and effort from you, requires robust communications, high quality direct reports and clear goals from you that everyone understands.
There’s much more to this challenge, but hopefully that adds some value to your deliberations.
Good luck!
If so, there are many factors to consider, including:
- Are they currently meeting/exceeding their mandate? This helps determine how often you will need to be involved to help them along.
- Are your direct reports good? This helps determine both how much you can delegate (to free you up) and how good they will be at leading their own teams.
- How important is it to them seeing you regularly? ‘Visible Leadership ‘ is an important component of high performing teams (don’t get it mixed up with micromanagement!). This is why you’ll maybe need to delegate more to free you up to deliver that visible leadership.
- Whenever there’s something being rationed (in this case, office space), think of your staff first and yourself last.
- Re office space; I’d always look for a way to maximise your current space rather than split the team up. could you all not hot desk or move to flexible working over a longer day to spread out the demand?
In summary, my experience of leading dispersed teams is that it is a challenge to do really well. It takes much more time and effort from you, requires robust communications, high quality direct reports and clear goals from you that everyone understands.
There’s much more to this challenge, but hopefully that adds some value to your deliberations.
Good luck!
allow them all to work from home.
use the phone and MS planner extensively ( part of o365 )
https://products.office.com/en-us/business/task-ma...
i'd have an absolute blind loyalty to a manager that got me a WFH gig.
use the phone and MS planner extensively ( part of o365 )
https://products.office.com/en-us/business/task-ma...
i'd have an absolute blind loyalty to a manager that got me a WFH gig.
SystemParanoia said:
i'd have an absolute blind loyalty to a manager that got me a WFH gig.
What attracts you to WFH?How do you work at the moment and what are the disadvantages over working from home?
It will be interesting to read your response as some companies are moving away from WFH even if that means they don't get the best staff, just those that happen to work close to their office as they prefer that to getting better staff but not having the integration of an office.
Pistom said:
SystemParanoia said:
i'd have an absolute blind loyalty to a manager that got me a WFH gig.
What attracts you to WFH?How do you work at the moment and what are the disadvantages over working from home?
It will be interesting to read your response as some companies are moving away from WFH even if that means they don't get the best staff, just those that happen to work close to their office as they prefer that to getting better staff but not having the integration of an office.
to do a job that could easily be done at home as i dont need access to anything other than o365
I'd rather spend it on the courses i need to upskill. ahh well. I'll get there in the end.
then theres the time element. 2+ hours a day wasted commuting that i could spend either doing more work/training/with my kids, or just unwinding an doing nothing.
And the best bit, the opportunity to actually get to the kids school when somethings happening, and get to enjoy their moment in the spotlight with them instead of only hearing about it.
Edited by SystemParanoia on Monday 30th October 07:29
SystemParanoia said:
Well.........
Thanks for the honesty and frankness. It's interestingto get peoples input. Once working from home you will also find you get a lot more done and can manage your time more effectively. It does have its downsides too though. Edited by SystemParanoia on Monday 30th October 07:29
It’s certainly doable.
For us the informal chat thing is covered by Skype. You get used to just buzzing someone when you’ve got an idea to talk about, for example, and can add others into the call easily enough.
We use Dropbox for shared documents so a file you need is never far away. If you’re talking about physical files you need access to (?) you’d obviously need to change the workflow to either include scanning them in or move to an electronic version, which isn’t a bad thing regardless of where the team sits.
As Rog touched on, you need good quality direct reports. If you’re concerned about them not cracking on when you aren’t around, or whether they’re keeping you informed of issues you need to know about immediately, not next time you call in, then perhaps they’re not quite the right people.
It’s not too hard to get into the mindset of communicating pertinent issues, by some method other than face to face, whilst saving less pressing ones for a weekly get together. Do you even need to be there weekly? If you can do a weekly conf call (or a couple whilst bedding in) it would save you half a day of commuting, too.
For background, in my current role I don’t directly manage anyone just now but the whole business works remotely and we’re based around Europe, 15 people in total. No two people live within less than a couple of hours of each other, except a small team of young techie people who work partly from home, partly from the business’ only office (located in Central Europe). Their manager is in another country.
In my previous role I managed a team made up partly of local office and partly dotted around Europe. The guys in Europe had their own teams to manage so cracked on with that and I held a weekly conf call with them. I’d have been very disappointed to only hear of important issues on that call but can’t recall that ever happening.
For us the informal chat thing is covered by Skype. You get used to just buzzing someone when you’ve got an idea to talk about, for example, and can add others into the call easily enough.
We use Dropbox for shared documents so a file you need is never far away. If you’re talking about physical files you need access to (?) you’d obviously need to change the workflow to either include scanning them in or move to an electronic version, which isn’t a bad thing regardless of where the team sits.
As Rog touched on, you need good quality direct reports. If you’re concerned about them not cracking on when you aren’t around, or whether they’re keeping you informed of issues you need to know about immediately, not next time you call in, then perhaps they’re not quite the right people.
It’s not too hard to get into the mindset of communicating pertinent issues, by some method other than face to face, whilst saving less pressing ones for a weekly get together. Do you even need to be there weekly? If you can do a weekly conf call (or a couple whilst bedding in) it would save you half a day of commuting, too.
For background, in my current role I don’t directly manage anyone just now but the whole business works remotely and we’re based around Europe, 15 people in total. No two people live within less than a couple of hours of each other, except a small team of young techie people who work partly from home, partly from the business’ only office (located in Central Europe). Their manager is in another country.
In my previous role I managed a team made up partly of local office and partly dotted around Europe. The guys in Europe had their own teams to manage so cracked on with that and I held a weekly conf call with them. I’d have been very disappointed to only hear of important issues on that call but can’t recall that ever happening.
Don't micro manage.
Nothing worse than the manager who has trust issues and keeps calling to check the worker is sat at his desk at that moment. As said by others, have a morning call, discuss what each person is to achieve that day, then leave them to it unless you have a real need to speak to them.
Nothing worse than the manager who has trust issues and keeps calling to check the worker is sat at his desk at that moment. As said by others, have a morning call, discuss what each person is to achieve that day, then leave them to it unless you have a real need to speak to them.
SystemParanoia said:
allow them all to work from home.
I think this might be key.Don't force anyone to work from home (some undoubtedly won't want to, or would prefer a mix), but if you allow them to you'll get more buy in from the team than if you're the only remote worker. You can also tilt the way the team communicates to be "remote-first" - i.e. don't just grab a meeting room with who's within arms reach but call whoever's available.
I'm in software development, we have a daily video call as a minimum to check in with what we did yesterday, what we intend to do today and anything blocking us from being effective. It's a pretty standard style of meeting in software development but it's well suited to managing teams remotely.
I'd also suggest; buy everyone a decent headset with mic, encourage them to post to a group chat room / slack frequently, to use video calling software that has support for online/away status - use being online as ready to take a video call. Encourage people to use and be open to receiving video calls first. That virtual face-to-face contact is important, let them set themselves to a DnD status if they really need to get their heads down.
The detail of whether you use Slack vs. XMPP, Hangouts vs. Skype or Box vs. Dropbox isn't a big deal. Pick one, run with it and if the team have issues let them trial something else.
Edited by 768 on Monday 30th October 11:30
My own viewpoint, as someone working in Europe in a very large company, remotely managing a team in India, with all of my management above me that I report into based in the US...
It's obviously far more challenging than being able to work face-to-face
You need excellent communication and good organizational skills. As a previous poster said, don't micromanage, but do maintain regular contact
Build good relationships with your staff- get to know them, understand what makes them tick, what motivates them, understand their challenges/issues. You need to trust them, they need to trust you
Make sure you have good knowledge management- secure, shared drives for sharing files; good TC/VC set up- Skype with videoconferencing and screen sharing works well enough
Try to make sure there is some budget available for face to face meeting as best you can.
It is entirely possible to make this work successfully; you'll never quite lose the feeling that it would be far better if everyone was colocated; just accept this
It's obviously far more challenging than being able to work face-to-face
You need excellent communication and good organizational skills. As a previous poster said, don't micromanage, but do maintain regular contact
Build good relationships with your staff- get to know them, understand what makes them tick, what motivates them, understand their challenges/issues. You need to trust them, they need to trust you
Make sure you have good knowledge management- secure, shared drives for sharing files; good TC/VC set up- Skype with videoconferencing and screen sharing works well enough
Try to make sure there is some budget available for face to face meeting as best you can.
It is entirely possible to make this work successfully; you'll never quite lose the feeling that it would be far better if everyone was colocated; just accept this
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