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Communication & Interpersonal Skills, Long-Distance Leadership, Long-Distance Work, Teamwork & Collaboration

The Caveman Approach to Remote Worker Engagement

Employee engagement is often listed as the biggest challenge for people who lead remote, virtual, or hybrid teams. But if this is a problem that requires brand new, cutting-edge solutions, why are so many companies using caveman techniques to keep employees engaged?

If you are of a certain age, you remember the cartoons where a caveman would club a prospective mate on the head and drag them by the hair back to their cave, where they would then be married. As engagement ceremonies go, it is certainly cheaper than a diamond, but far less romantic. And while this is a somewhat crude analogy, it is kind of the way many organizations go about their engagement efforts.

How is this like employee engagement programs? Just because you’ve been knocked on the head and overwhelmed is not a guarantee that you will want to spend the rest of your short, Paleolithic life with the person who claimed you. Both people need to be committed to making the relationship work. The same is true of many programs designed to help remote workers create strong social, emotional and psychological connections to their employers. We figure if we just beat them over the head long enough, they will feel connected.

Flawed Assumptions About Engagement

Many well-intentioned efforts to help employees connect to the organization and each other suffer because there is a flawed assumption at work. In essence, the thinking is, “I want you to feel connected to me, and if I just work hard enough and overwhelm you, you will submit.” Thus we get an endless barrage of pizza days, cutest pet contests and well-meaning newsletters. Maybe the employees you hope to connect with don’t want to be clubbed and dragged back to the cave.

The problem is that real engagement requires the effort and buy-in of both parties, and remote workers often have different motivators at work than those who work in traditional workplaces. Unless you understand what people really want you are working really hard, for all the right reasons, and not only getting poor results but giving the other person a massive headache in the process.

Have you asked your remote workers what they are looking for from the working relationship?

Contractors who seek short-term contracts will interact and engage much differently than those looking to find a home and a career with your company. Some people really enjoy activities that connect teammates. Others choose to work from home specifically because they can focus on work and not get distracted by constant interruptions and socializing.

Holding meetings in a conference room where most of the team can get together and socialize often helps galvanize the group and create strong bonds. But how is that helping the person working from home who can’t hear what’s being said, isn’t asked for their input, and feels like a second-class citizen? Perhaps having everyone join online might level the playing field and create more of a sense of camaraderie. Do the introverts on your team really want to share their embarrassing high school photo with people they’ve never met and don’t yet have a relationship with?

Without taking the time to understand what is motivating your remote workers, you run the risk of putting a lot of effort into engagement programs that are counter-productive. True engagement requires the invested effort of both parties.

Have you taken the time to understand the needs of the people on your virtual team? Or are you just beating them with a club and hoping they stay?

One thing that can help you better understand your team is the DISC Assessment. Find out how to utilize DISC with your remote team to open up the lines of communication.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Wayne Turmel
Co-Founder and Product Line Manager

Wayne Turmel is the co-founder and Product Line Manager for the Remote Leadership Institute. For twenty years he’s been obsessed with helping managers communicate more effectively with their teams, bosses and customers. Wayne is the author of several books that demystify communicating through technology including Meet Like You Mean It – a Leader’s Guide to Painless & Productive Virtual Meetings, 10 Steps to Successful Virtual Presentations and 6 Weeks to a Great Webinar. His work appears frequently in Management-Issues.com.

Wayne, along with Kevin Eikenberry, has co-authored the definitive book on leading remotely, The Long-Distance Leader: Rules for Remarkable Remote Leadership.

Coaching & Developing Others, Long-Distance Leadership, Long-Distance Work, Teamwork & Collaboration

How Long-Distance Leaders Can Simplify Learning

A good teacher must be able to put himself in the place of those who find learning hard.

-Eliphas Levi, French educator 1810-1875

One of a leader’s most important jobs is to help develop the skills of their team members. For many of us, this is why we became managers or leaders in the first place: we love helping others learn and succeed. But remote working relationships create some unique challenges for us.

Monsieur Levi’s quote above suggests one of the challenges (and it’s common to all of us who became leaders because we were good individual contributors). Very often the thing you are trying to teach, or the skill you’re hoping they learn, comes so simply to you that you underestimate the challenge to the other person. When you are across a desk, or standing on the shop floor with the other person, body language, non-verbal communication, and other verbal and vocal cues tell us whether or not they are understanding, buying in, and able to perform the new skill.

When we work remotely, we don’t get all of that information. We are often reduced to checking for understanding by asking, “Do you understand?” If they say yes, we assume that they get it, because they just told us they did. That’s not always a safe assumption. Sometimes people say yes just so you’ll go away and we usually oblige them. We don’t know something hasn’t been learned until much later.

So what are some other things we need to think about when doing training, coaching, and skill development on a remote team? Glad you asked.

Have them prove they understand.

Telling someone the easiest way to find an online order can be frustrating at the best of times. If you’ve ever tried to walk someone through a process like that on the telephone, you know it can be annoying for both parties, and when they tell you they get it, you sometimes just hope for the best. Fortunately, tools like Microsoft Teams/Skype for Business, Zoom, WebEx and others allow you to do more than just ask if they have learned the new skill. By using screen sharing and passing control of the meeting to them, they can show you what they’ve learned, and you can see for yourself if they’ve gained the knowledge you tried to share. This is a good practice for anyone trying to pass skills on, but online it’s critical because you may not have additional chances to coach or assist them like you do when they are within shouting distance.

Peer coaching is a win-win-win.

Just because you need an employee to learn how to do something, doesn’t mean you have to be the teacher. Delegating the training to others on your team has multiple benefits. You are free to do other things, the team members get a chance to strengthen their relationship by working together and seeing how competent their teammates are, and people get a sense of pride in teaching others (just like you do.) Besides, when it comes to some of the technical skills or best practices, you probably have folks in your circle who are better at whatever it is than you are. Why have the blind lead the blind?

Checking in isn’t a sign you don’t trust people- plan for it.

Once the learning event is over, whether it’s a training, e-learning or just a coaching session, schedule how and when you’re going to check in. Yes, you want to make sure the person is employing the new skill. You also want to answer any questions that come up and reinforce the learning. Maybe most importantly, if the desire is to change behavior, people need to know that someone will notice if they do the task differently and better. Too much training is “spray and pray”: you tell them something and assume (more likely hope) that they apply it, but you’re not really sure. If you’re not going to expect them to use the new skill, why bother?

What are some of the best practices you and your team have used to help teach others?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Wayne Turmel
Co-Founder and Product Line Manager

Wayne, along with Kevin Eikenberry, has co-authored the definitive book on leading remotely, The Long-Distance Leader: Rules for Remarkable Remote Leadership. Wayne and Kevin’s follow-up book, The Long-Distance Teammate, offers a roadmap for success not just for leaders, but for everyone making the transition to working remotely.

Long-Distance Leadership, Organizational Leadership, Teamwork & Collaboration

Remote Work Isn’t for Everyone

With all the headlines about the wonders of remote work, and how everyone will be happier and more productive if we let them work wherever they want, it’s important to offer this little reminder: Virtual teams are not right for every company or every worker. There, I said it.

This came to mind because an article in HR Today magazine had the scary title “Why are Companies Ending Remote Work?” It’s a great question. It’s also a tad misleading. Yes, some companies are requesting their people spend more time in the office. Furthermore, reducing remote work may actually be the right answer for some teams. Moreover (and don’t tell the cool kids that I hang out with) remote work is NOT right for every company.

What matters is that every worker and organization has to decide for themselves what will work and what won’t. The trick is to make sure you’re making the right decision for the right reasons.

Remote Work May Not Be Right If:

Your company culture demands frequent, high-quality collaboration.

The most famous example of this is when teams of trouble-shooting IBM engineers found they weren’t collaborating as effectively when they worked apart from each other. In this case, they found that reverting to co-located teams improved their outcomes. That’s a good reason.

Your company uses remote work as a perk, without creating productivity-based metrics and systems that measure the right outputs.

For many organizations, remote work is treated as a reward or a perk. People like it, it doesn’t cost anything, and so it’s an easy thing to grant. The problem is that when there are no processes or metrics, the results may be uneven and it’s harder to help people be accountable for the quality of their work. Yahoo is a high-profile example of a company that woke up one morning and realized there was too much chaos and not enough quality work getting done, so they brought everyone back to the mothership.

You don’t have a plan to engage people with their work and each other.

There is an assumption that telework is most effective when people have highly individualized, task-based work. On the surface, that makes perfect sense. But without constant effort, it is hard to engage people who don’t take an interest in the company that employs them. Disengaged solo workers are easily recruited elsewhere, since there’s no emotional attachment to the employer or their teammates. They also tend to work on things they’ll be immediately rewarded for (like task completion) rather than work that will have a broader impact on the team. That creates an over-emphasis on urgent, rather than important, work.

Your company culture is highly social, and people believe it to be a key to your success.

Peter Drucker once famously said that “Culture beats strategy every time.” Building a company culture that is supportive, positive and where relationships are valued is easier when everyone sees each other all the time.

We could just as easily include a list of times when remote work might be right for you and yours, but it comes with the same warning: For every company that decides it won’t work, there’s another company that makes telework succeed. The important factor is that you identify what you want to have happen, how you can ensure (or at least increase the odds) that people will have the opportunity to be successful, and that leaders make that part of their daily practice, and not as an afterthought. Success in business is rarely an accident, and that’s especially true when it comes to remote working.

So, is remote work right for your company? If you say no, what are you basing that assumption on? If you say yes, what are some potential challenges to success that you should be identifying and planning to address right now?

Learn more about why some virtual teams fail in this free report.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Wayne Turmel
Co-Founder and Product Line Manager

Wayne, along with Kevin Eikenberry, has co-authored the definitive book on leading remotely, The Long-Distance Leader: Rules for Remarkable Remote Leadership.

Leadership, Long-Distance Leadership, Teamwork & Collaboration

Little Things that Add Up for Long-Distance Leaders

You might not have a favorite Greek philosopher, but I do. And you might not think someone who wrote at the time of the Roman Emperor Nero would be relevant to leading a remote team, but you’d be wrong. My boy Epictetus is still relevant.

Particularly relevant today is this quote: “Practice yourself, for heaven’s sake in little things, and then proceed to greater.”

Yes, good leaders aspire to greatness, as we should. But in order to achieve greatness there are a metric butt-load of little things that add up to being a good leader. Here are just some of the small things that lead to great results and why they matter:

Before delegating, think about your entire team, not just the first person you see.

One of the most corrosive leadership behaviors over time is the perception of unfairness. When the remote people think that those in the home office are getting preferential treatment (or vice versa) it can impact engagement and team morale. Start by thinking about the task to be done, and who might benefit from the opportunity before finding the first warm body you come across.

In hybrid meetings, don’t let the people in the room dominate the conversation.

It is easy to get caught up in the natural flow of conversation and let people in the room bounce off of each other. But if someone is dialing in, they may not have a chance to contribute, and might not even hear half of what’s being said. Ensure that you actively engage remote team members, and give them the opportunity to make themselves heard first once in a while.

Help your team know about the successes of your remote team members in proportion to those in the office.

One of the little things managers can do to help build trust on their teams is to make sure that people have a chance to see how smart and motivated their teammates are. When you give positive feedback and praise to someone who works from home, the only person who hears it is that individual. Are you taking time in meetings, emails, and the like to help teammates get to know and appreciate each other?

Take an extra 30 seconds when sending texts and IMs to offer context.

A little thing that can make a big difference is to add a few words of context to your Instant messages and requests for time. For example, “Have you got a minute?” may be an innocent request but the other person doesn’t know if they should stop what they’re doing and answer you. “Have you got a minute to talk about ____. If we could do that before the end of the day that would be great…” takes an extra 8 seconds (I just timed it, and that included fixing a typo) but allows someone to be responsive without interfering with their work flow. You are also seen as less demanding, which isn’t a bad thing.

Include an agenda in the body of your meeting invitations.

When you send out a meeting invitation, most people put it in their calendar electronically, using the “add to your calendar link.” That way they always have it. But when you send a separate agenda (usually as an attachment to an email) there’s a pretty good chance people will ignore it, delete it, or forget where they saved it. By putting it in the body of the meeting invitation (and you can always cut and paste the agenda then update the invitation) they will have the agenda on every device, and no way to deny they saw it.

It’s the little things that add up to big differences. What are your best “little” practices that make a big difference to your team?

In addition to The Remote Leadership Certificate Series (a big thing) we offer these courses on some of the “little things,” which as I’ve pointed out in this piece, can make a big difference over time. Find out which of these skills you need to focus on to be a better Long-Distance Leader.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Wayne Turmel
Co-Founder and Product Line Manager

Wayne, along with Kevin Eikenberry, has co-authored the definitive book on leading remotely, The Long-Distance Leader: Rules for Remarkable Remote Leadership.

Communication & Interpersonal Skills, Long-Distance Work, Teamwork & Collaboration

Proactivity: The Secret to Successful Remote Teamwork

What makes a successful long-distance team member? The answer might surprise you.

As part of our ongoing effort to survey long-distance leaders and the people who work for them, we’ve been asking a lot of questions. Whether it’s the managers or the individual workers, one word popped up again and again: Proactivity.

Definitions.net has this to say about proactivity (and you can read the whole, much longer description here): Proactivity or proactive behavior refers to anticipatory, change-oriented and self-initiated behavior in situations, particularly in the workplace. Proactive behavior involves acting in advance of a future situation, rather than just reacting. It means taking control and making things happen rather than just adjusting to a situation or waiting for something to happen. Proactive employees generally do not need to be asked to act, nor do they require detailed instructions.

As always, there is a “yes, and” associated with this. Yes, it means that to be a successful remote worker, you need to be self-motivated. You don’t always have your colleagues to push you, and your boss won’t come to your desk and ask why your Facebook page is up instead of that spreadsheet.

AND it means so much more than that. These are a few of the ways proactivity impacts your teammates, your manager and your work:

Proactivity means not waiting to be told something needs to happen.

This one is obvious, and it’s the first thing we think of when we hear about someone being proactive. If something needs to be done, you want to be seen as having the initiative and wisdom to just do it.

Proactivity means if you see something, say something.

This is a little less obvious. One of the pitfalls of working by yourself is a tendency to focus on your work, sometimes at the expense of others. This might mean seeing a potential problem, or someone asking a question of the group and your not responding, or not following up with a question to make sure they are on the right track. Long-distance teammates help each other just as much as those who share a cube farm. Don’t wait to be asked.

Proactivity means checking your ego at the door and asking questions.

This is the area managers report having the most concern about. Often, in an effort to appear capable and independent, people are afraid to ask clarifying questions, or double check their priorities. Most managers would much rather have you ask a simple question before spending hours on unproductive work. But many employees are afraid they will be seen as needy or not sufficiently independent. As a result, too often we dig ourselves into a hole when we could have been saved by a little proactive questioning and qualifying.

Proactivity means volunteering and seeking out opportunities for growth.

One of the great fears of those who work remotely (especially if most of the team is co=located) is being “out of sight, out of mind.” This is particularly true when it comes to task delegation and participation in projects. These are the opportunities that can make you shine and help build your resume for career advancement, but too often these go to people who are right under the manager’s nose. It’s not intentional, it’s just that leaders often need someone right away and they grab the first person they see. If you are interested in keeping your profile high and seeming valuable to the team, be proactive about seeking development opportunities. Let your manager know during your one on one calls that you are open and eager for the challenge. That way you’ll stay on the career path.

By not only being proactive about your tasks and work, but about reaching out to teammates and working on your career, you’ll be seen as a productive, valuable, and effective long-distance teammate.

Of course, there’s another word that begins with “P” that will make you a great long-distance team member: productivity. Check out our e-course on Maximizing Your Productivity as a Remote Employee.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Wayne Turmel
Co-Founder and Product Line Manager

Wayne, along with Kevin Eikenberry, has co-authored the definitive book on leading remotely, The Long-Distance Leader: Rules for Remarkable Remote Leadership. You can pre-order Kevin and Wayne’s follow-up book, The Long-Distance Teammate, now.

Long-Distance Leadership, Organizational Leadership, Teamwork & Collaboration

Building a Culture of Trust

by Chuck Chapman, Content Strategy Coordinator

Kevin and Wayne spend an entire chapter (chapter 11 if you want to reference) in The Long-Distance Leader talking about the importance of trust with remote teams and unpacking their model (see below). Trust is one of those “squishy” concepts, however, that can make some leaders uneasy. While it’s usually pretty apparent when it’s missing, it’s harder to quantify when you have it and even harder to pin down just what the “ROI” is so that you can justify spending time and resources developing it.

Simply put, trust must be the foundation for your team’s culture. It’s the transactional currency you’ll use for everything you do together. Without it, you’re limited to being a loosely connected bunch of individual contractors. With it, you’re united in pursuit of ever-increasing achievement of common goals.

Let’s take a look at the Trust Model and what it means in terms of your remote team culture.

Common Purpose

This is both the pinnacle of the trust diagram and the foundation of trust itself. It holds everything together, much like a column or tower functions on a suspension bridge. Teams that work together in the same location often find it easier to tap into the strength of common purpose. There’s probably signage placed around the offices and in the break room, offering regular reminders. You chat with each other, both formally and casually, with people doing the same thing you are.

When you’re working remotely, a number of factors can negatively influence and cloud this shared sense of purpose.

You might be part of a project team. These can include contractors who may or may not be in tune with the shared vision of the team. They may not even view the leader as their “real boss.” They just want to get the work done and get paid.
People who work remotely have been shown to be more task-oriented than team-oriented. It’s easier to put your head down and get into your individual silo to get your work completed. Over time, without being reminded of a shared purpose, this can result in an “every man for himself” mentality, which is antithetical to building trust.

Leadership takeaway: Make reminding your team of their shared purpose a priority. Intentionally remind team members at the start of meetings. Reinforce it when other members of the team bring it up. When goals and benchmarks are reached, make sure they’re tied into how they help everyone achieve the shared goals.

Competence

We tend to view competence as something that concerns the individual, but it’s an important factor for teams as well. Quite simply, how can I trust someone if I’m not confident they can get the job done? When team members don’t trust the competence of others, they short-circuit communication, possibly leaving out the member whose skills are in doubt. That’s a major fracture in any project team, depriving them of the value of their shared resources and abilities.

For their part, leaders can drift into micro-managing when trust in competence isn’t there. Managers will also often pass over suspected “weak links” when it comes to delegating tasks.

Why does this happen? Like it or not, we believe what we see. When we all work together in the same place, I can see Bill doing his work. That means when the inevitable bump in the road comes along and threatens to sidetrack our progress, I’m less likely to blame Bill for the problem.

Leadership takeaway: First off, do your diligence when hiring and make sure you’re putting the right person in the right role. After that, over-communicate (if that’s possible with a remote team). Have regular status check-ins where team members report their progress AND their potential roadblocks. That accomplishes two things: It allows team members to “see” the hard work everyone is putting in and, perhaps more importantly, it rallies the team toward a sense of “shared competence” to lend a hand when one person might be having a problem.

Motives

This is similar to shared purpose, but not quite the same. Let’s look at our colleague, Bill again as an example. I can believer Bill is on board with the team goals and purpose. I can even believe Bill is good at what he does. But if I think Bill is a “bad actor” who has his own self-interests at heart ahead of mine or the team’s then I’m not likely to trust him.

This is more about how your team interacts as human beings. When we’re together at the same place, we have plenty of opportunities to informally gage the character and motivations of our co-workers. Even then, interpretations can be incorrect. When we work apart from each other though, all manner of negative beliefs can creep in, especially when the pressure to complete a project starts to mount.

“I emailed Bill yesterday about those specs and he still hasn’t responded. Does he even care?” “We just had an important team meeting and Bill didn’t speak a single word. Was he even paying attention?”

These situations might easily be diffused with a co-located team. A quick trip to Bill’s cube might show us he’s really busy with another aspect of the project. Or in the conference room, we might notice by Bill’s body language that he’s not feeling too well that day. Again, it might not be fair, but the lack of face to face interaction with remote teams leaves room for some of our least desirable human qualities to take over.

Leadership Takeaway: Again, creating space for communication and transparency is the key here. At The Kevin Eikenberry Group, we have a “water cooler” channel devoted to allowing the team to get to know each other as people. Kevin also insists that every new hire instigate a call with other members of the team to talk about non-business related interests. On top of that, Kevin brings us together a couple of times a year so we can meet, work and even relax with each other face to face. Never forget that your team is more than a collection of individual talents and skills. They’re people.

Building your team culture is the most important thing you’ll do as a leader. With your remote team, centering it around trust will produce results you can’t begin to quantify. It won’t come naturally. Take the time and be intentional about developing trust on your team.

Communication & Interpersonal Skills, Leadership, Long-Distance Leadership, Teamwork & Collaboration

What Does Engagement Look Like?

Engagement is one of the topics remote leaders lose the most sleep over. In a recent poll, we learned that “keeping the team engaged” is more of a concern for leaders than team communication, measuring performance or making sure people are working when they say they are.

So, there’s no doubt today’s question is one that’s on the mind of every Long-Distance Leader, but a bigger question remains: What exactly is “engagement?

The dictionary wasn’t much help. It actually made me laugh, because the first definition was “The duration of an agreement to get married” while the second was “to meet the enemy in combat.” As a former comedian, my first reaction is “there’s a lot of good material here,” but that doesn’t help us get any closer to our goal of defining engagement.

When managers talk about their employees being “engaged,” what exactly are they looking for? Essentially they want to know if their people care (about more than a paycheck, that is). Here is a partial list of behaviors that show your employees care:

Proactive communication

Do members of your team regularly reach out to you (and their teammates) with questions, suggestions and feedback, or do they have to be begged, cajoled and solicited for their input? This can also show up in one-on-one coaching sessions. Do people raise issues and discussion topics on their own, or do they go along with whatever your agenda is? Do you only hear from people when there is a big problem, and you find yourself asking, “why didn’t you say something earlier?” There’s likely a disconnect you need to address.

Active meeting participation

Do people treat virtual meetings or teleconferences in the same way they do in-person meetings? Do they offer opinions, ask questions, and generally speak up? One of the biggest signs of low engagement is silence when you ask people to contribute. If team members think they’ve done their job by simply joining the call and getting an attendance checkmark beside their name, they are disengaged.

Offer proof they have the big picture in mind

When you have conversations with team members, are they only concerned about only their own work, tasks and metrics, or do they seem interested in the team and organization’s success? Engaged workers about more than just getting the work done. They want to know how their work impacts everyone’s overall success.

Willing to engage (constructively) in conflict

Often the first sign of disengagement is the hardest to recognize. People who aren’t emotionally invested in their work and their teammates will gradually stop offering ideas, challenging bad information, and providing feedback. They simply disappear into the background. What can look like passive agreement may actually be a matter of not caring enough to put in the effort it takes. It’s hard to tell at first, because it appears that everyone is doing what they’re told without argument. That lack of conflict could be a sign of trouble, however. And of course your meetings all end on time because no one is talking. That’s a good thing, right? Maybe not.

None of these behaviors in and of themselves is proof that your team members are disengaged. After all, sometimes people actually agree with what’s being said in the meeting and don’t need to chime in. Other times they decide for the good of the team and their relationships not to challenge someone’s idea.

On the other hand, if you are hearing less and less positive input from someone, the quality of their work is dropping, or they seem to be meeting minimum performance standards but aren’t putting in visible effort, you may have an engagement problem.

Leading remotely requires constant monitoring of, not just what’s visible, but what’s lurking under the surface. Make sure your one-on-one conversations are probing for more than just task completion. And if your gut tells you something’s up, it’s probably right.

What are some of the ways you actively test the engagement of your team members?

As I alluded to above, your meetings are a great place to encourage and measure employee engagement. It’s also a great place for you to start as a Long-Distance Leader building that engagement level you’re after. We’ve got a great on-demand course to help you do that, Leading Effective Virtual Meetings.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Wayne Turmel
Co-Founder and Product Line Manager

Wayne, along with Kevin Eikenberry, has co-authored the definitive book on leading remotely, The Long-Distance Leader: Rules for Remarkable Remote Leadership.

Communication & Interpersonal Skills, Long-Distance Leadership, Long-Distance Work, Productivity, Teamwork & Collaboration

Does Your Remote Team Know What’s Expected?

by Chuck Chapman, Content Strategy Coordinator

Remote work is becoming more common, but it’s still fairly new for most organizations. If you’re a remote leader, chances are this is your first time leading a remote team, and many team members may also be experiencing their first job away from the office.

That means all of you are sailing in some uncharted waters. The good news is you’re not tied to a lot of “traditional” practices, so you can be more innovative. The bad news is you don’t have the benefit of a long history of “this is how we do things.” That can lead to uncertainty and discomfort among the team.

Expectations go both ways

The first thing you need to understand as a leader is expectation is a two-way street. Not only will you communicate to your team what’s expected of them, but you should solicit what they’re expecting of you. It’s probably more than just a paycheck every two weeks. When you find out what your team expects from you as a leader, you have the opportunity to meet those expectations, creating a more positive team culture.

How will we communicate?

There’s no popping in the boss’s office or stopping by Jane’s cube to deliver a message with a remote team. The first thing you need to establish are expectations around team communication. You’re going to want to have answers for these kinds of questions:

Am I expected to communicate my progress on assigned tasks? If so, how often?
Is there an expectation for responding to emails within a certain period of time?
Are we having any regular meetings as a team? If so, are those mandatory to attend?

You’ll come up with many others when you ask your team for their input, but these are a good place to start.

How will you know what I’m doing?

One of the biggest issues for Long-Distance Leaders is measuring productivity. If you can’t see Joe working at his desk, how do you know he’s working? Well, first you’re going to have to get over the desire to control every moment for your team. That’s not optimal for a co-located team, and it’s just not possible with a remote team. Here are some questions to consider regarding your team’s productivity:

How will you be tracking productivity? What specific metrics will you be using?
What are the requirements for reporting time?
What about time away? If a team member has to be away from his/her desk during “normal” work hours, should that be communicated? How and to whom?
On that note, are there expected common work hours? (This can be tricky for international teams.)

What expectations are there regarding teamwork and culture?

Don’t let this one slide just because it may be a little more “squishy” than the other expectations. If you don’t set up expectations for how your team interacts and building culture, you’re asking for trouble down the road.

It’s really easy for remote workers to get into a “silo” mentality because they’re physically removed from the rest of the team. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure in this case. Encourage and model team communication.

One of the things Kevin Eikenberry encourages with our team is “small talk.” There’s a tendency with remote teams to “get down to business” and become very transactional with communication. Kevin intentionally sets up opportunities for team members to talk about last night’s big game or their kid’s violin recital before moving on to the “important” stuff.

If you’re in the formative stages with your remote team, or maybe if you’re playing catch-up because you started without setting these expectations, a great place to start is this course on creating and managing remote teams.

Communication & Interpersonal Skills, Long-Distance Work, Teamwork & Collaboration

A Crazy Solution for Your Remote Communication Problems

What is the biggest complaint remote workers have about remote communication their colleagues? If you guessed too many emails, or being barraged by Slack messages, you’re in the top ten. But when we recently asked people “What’s the thing that drives you craziest about working with remote workers?” the answer was a little surprising.

“I hate talking on the phone. I prefer solving the problem by IM”

“IM stinks for problem solving. I wish people would just pick up the phone.”

“Once you get used to it, webcam is quick and easy and lets you see who you’re working with.”

“Webcams suck.”

It turns out that people like communicating in the way they are most comfortable, and get a little cranky when others don’t work with them in that way. But if every human being has their own particular communication comfort zone, how is a team supposed to settle on processes and norms so that everyone gets at least some of what they need?

Here’s a crazy idea. Ask them.

Seriously. When was the last time someone asked you how you wanted to communicate about a problem before you got mired down in the communication muck? Usually those discussions come after someone has to speak up and shout, “THIS ISN”T WORKING!” That’s when people snip email threads and get on the phone, or plan meetings after wasting a whole afternoon arguing on Slack.

How do we know what people want from us when it comes to communication? Well, since you’re asking:

If you have a need for someone’s time, ask them how they want to communicate.

We have a colleague here who actually (brace yourselves) would rather talk on the phone than indulge in pointless typing back and forth only to wind up having to get on the phone anyway. The more complicated the matter, the more likely a simple text exchange won’t work. If we want to avoid making her crazy, we get on the phone sooner rather than later. Crazy, huh?

It helps if you know in advance what people prefer.

When you work in the office together, you get to know who’s open to interruptions, who wants the world to go away, and who you need to approach with a peace offering of some kind (usually something baked and tasty). It’s harder, but not impossible, to get to know people’s work styles when you don’t get those daily cues. Tools like DISC and other work style assessments are helpful. (Here’s a link to a free DISC assessment if you aren’t familiar)

Be willing to use remote communication tools or styles that aren’t your personal preference.

As a manager, people will generally bend over backwards to make you happy. This means if you’ve made it clear that email is the best way to work with you, that’s what they’ll use. The problem, of course, is that it may not be the most effective or efficient way to address a problem. You might really hate being on webcam (it’s not my personal first choice) but its value is so obvious that sometimes it’s the right answer. Are you willing to adapt to the situation? If you’re a manager, are your people comfortable suggesting other means of communicating to you?

Be explicit about the need to choose the right tool for the right job.

Keep the conversation going with your team. Make choosing the right medium for the right message at the heart of your team’s work. Don’t assume everyone thinks about this stuff…most of us are too busy just trying to get the job done.

That probably includes you. We get caught up in the day to day and aren’t intentional about how we work together. But we should be. You might be driving your colleagues crazy and not even know it.

What’s YOUR biggest complaint about remote communication? Remember, venting can be healthy!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Wayne Turmel
Co-Founder and Product Line Manager

Coaching & Developing Others, Communication & Interpersonal Skills, Long-Distance Work, Teamwork & Collaboration

Does Your Online Communication Build Relationships?

By Chuck Chapman, Content Strategy Coordinator

One of the foundations of being a remote leader is effective online communication. As we’ve well documented on this site and in The Long-Distance Leader, this is one of the principle leadership challenges for those heading up remote teams.

Simply put, communicating remotely just isn’t the same as communicating in co-located office settings. Much of the richness that comes with face-to-face communication is missing. That often makes interpreting messages more complex than when we’re sitting across a table from each other. Without the context of non-verbal communication and even voice tone, messages sent via e-mail or chat sometimes lack the clarity we’re after.

Communication is about more than the message

But getting the message across is only half the battle when it comes to online communication. Communication is also about building relationships. When we send e-mails or notes in Slack, there’s more than just an exchange of information and data going on. There’s an interaction between human beings that will impact the way they think about each other, and ultimately how they work together.

We can have all our “I’s” dotted and “T’s” crossed, our grammar and punctuation proofread, and be totally accurate with our facts and figures, but if we neglect the relational component of communication, we’re only doing half the job.

Using the DISC Model as a Template for Effective Online Communication

The DISC Model is one of the most useful tools for understanding how people communicate. To understand it fully, you can read more at our DISC site, but it essentially breaks down communication styles into four quadrants: Dominant, Cautious, Inspiring and Supportive.

Those four styles describe the basic needs we all have when we communicate with each other. And while we can have different styles in different situations, by and large we each have a dominant style that we prefer.

These four styles can be further broken down into two main groups: Those who are more task-oriented in their communication and those who are more relational. You may already be ahead of me in recognizing the main challenge for remote teams: the nature of online communication tends to reward the task-oriented people while depriving the relational people of necessary input.

Getting Beyond the Information Exchange

When we work together remotely, it’s easy to get lulled into the “just get the job done” frame of mind. That gets reflected in our communication. We think we’re doing a great job when we’re providing all the relevant information and not wasting the time of our colleagues with stuff that’s unrelated to the success of the project.

The folks in the “D” and “C” quadrants will probably love that. They’re much more receptive to “bottom line” messages that answer the questions “What” and “Why.” But if you’re communicating with the relationally focused people in the “I” or “S” quadrants, they’re going to see that same interaction as cold and lacking engagement. The data is important to them too, but they also want to talk about the excitement of the achievement and enjoy your virtual company. They’re more likely to go out of their way to express their appreciation and expect that in return.

Managing the Different Styles

So as you can probably see, even in a co-located setting that enjoys more “richness” in communication, meeting the needs of all these different styles doesn’t happen by chance. For each of us our default setting is to communicate in our own style. That can be the cause of unnecessary confusion and conflict, especially with remote teams.

As a Long-Distance Leader, it’s your responsibility to coach your team toward more effective online communication. That can mean using the proper tools and communicating the right information to the right people, but it also means encouraging the focus on relationships. When your team becomes aware of their own communication needs and biases as well as those of their teammates, you’ll find they work together more productively and effectively.

You can get started by taking your own DISC assessment for free. You can also learn more about DISC and take advantage of all the other features, including a detailed team assessment that can be the springboard for improving your team’s online communication.

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