7 Tips on How to be a Better Remote Team Leader

The remote work culture is growing at an exponential rate. Many employees believe that remote is the future of work and won’t accept the job if there’s no remote or hybrid work model. However, despite the popularity it enjoys, remote team leaders struggle to manage remote and hybrid teams due to different challenges. This article delves into the challenges of managing a remote team and how you can be a better remote team leader through actionable tips. 

According to a report conducted by terminal.io, only 27% of team leaders say that they’re focusing on a strong remote culture. The lack of culture could be seriously impacting the performance of teams because only 1 in 5 leaders believe their team is stronger and more productive when working remotely. 

Every team has the capacity to thrive, even with a hybrid or remote team culture. That’s why we listed 7 tips on how to be a better remote team leader and achieve peak productivity and performance with your team.

Challenges of Remote Team Leaders

Remote work has existed for a long time but was popular mainly among teams and roles that aren’t dependent on a certain location. The concept popularized even more during the global pandemic of COVID-19 and transitioned to a mix of remote and on-site work known as the hybrid work model.

As managers learned to lead their teams remotely, they faced new challenges. Here are some of the most common challenges that remote leaders face: 

• Lack of face-to-face communication
• Difficulties in evaluating productivity and performance of the team as a result of no tools to track progress.
• Struggles in building trust with coworkers that are not co-located. 
• Struggles in keeping focus at an optimal level.
• It’s challenging to cultivate company culture.
• Social isolation from co-located team members

All these challenges are caused largely by the fact that employees and managers are no longer working within the same walls. 

Managers worry that employees are not productive at home. In the same manner, employees get anxious that their managers don’t trust them. 

This pushes some managers to micromanage as they feel more at ease if they know what their teams are doing. 

But when this happens, it displays a lack of trust and makes it even harder for managers to create a productive and harmonious working culture for their remote team. These challenges require a different mindset on the part of managers. 

They must switch to becoming remote team leaders and adapt their management styles to the needs of their remote teams. 

Both managers and employees can experience social isolation. Working alone can get lonely at times. 

Managers as remote team leaders play a big role in ensuring that employees don’t feel isolated even when they’re miles apart from their teams. 

You might be one of those managers who are still getting used to this remote work lifestyle. 

Or maybe you’re looking at how to be an effective remote team leader.  Here we’ve got some 7 tips that you can easily apply to become the remote team leader your company needs in this extraordinary time.

7 Tips on How to Effectively Lead Remote Teams

Now that we have established the challenges of leading a remote team, here are 7 tips that will help you effectively lead remote teams while establishing trust and relationships with your team members. 

Establish a Work Agreement

A work agreement is a Scrum concept that Scrum teams use to declare how they expect each team member to work and interact with each other. 

Borrowing this Scrum concept, remote team leaders should establish a work agreement that specifies work expectations as well as what remote teams can expect from their managers as well. 

In Scrum, it’s the team that comes up with the work agreement and they establish a consensus. This can also be done by other remote teams outside of an Agile or Scrum implementation. 

Remote team leaders can draft a work agreement, discuss with their team, and get their consensus. This approach will help establish trust and clarity between employees and managers. 

Treat a work agreement as your remote work policy. Read the ten most important things every remote work policy should have and start drafting your own policy for your team.

Set Clear Expectations and Goals

Even in an office setting, studies show that around 50% of U.S. employees struggle to have a clear understanding of what’s expected of them at work. You can just imagine how this confusion magnifies when working remotely. 

Setting clear expectations and goals helps to diminish that confusion and enables remote team leaders to set a clearer path for their employees to follow. 

It also enables them to have a sounder basis for their team’s productivity and performance. For instance, a remote development team can deliver low-quality solutions when there are no defined expectations. 

In this case prioritizing speed over thoroughness leads to bugs, security vulnerabilities, or other quality issues. Expectations should also cover how you want and expect your team members to communicate and collaborate. This will go hand-in-hand with your work agreement or remote work policy.

Focus on Outcomes and Results over Activity

One thing managers need to overcome is the need to actually see what their teams are doing. Effective remote team leaders focus on outcomes and results and not on the amount of time worked. 

Sure, your teams can log as many hours as they want but are they getting their work done? Are they meeting the goals you set out for them? Are they showing up to meetings when you expect them to? Are they communicating to you and the rest of the team as they should? 

Time worked isn’t equal to work done well. While time tracking helps get an idea of an employee’s work schedule and availability, it should not be treated as the ultimate basis for productivity. That being said, you should aim to measure outcomes over outputs and see how it impacts the overall performance of your product or service you’re offering. 

Check-in Frequently

Since you don’t get to see your teams as often as you would in an office, it’s important to establish frequent check-ins. 

Not only does this make them feel that you care for them and the work they do. It also creates a sense of rhythm for them, making them more dynamic and potentially more productive. 

It helps make them feel that they are part of a larger group and reduces that feeling of isolation. Don’t just claim that your team is one big family, show it. Family members look one after another

An effective remote team leader knows that supporting your team and establishing a connection with them is crucial to remote work success.

Schedule both one-on-one catch ups and team check-ins with your team. Provide a venue for your employees to share their ideas, struggles, and aspirations with you. This will help build trust and cultivate a company culture that is inclusive, supportive, and productive to work on.

Offer Flexibility

Whether your remote team works from home or another remote location, you need to ensure that everyone is flexible and has the same working environment to do their work effectively. 

Everyone is different, so while some team members have an easier time focusing in the office, others may not have that luxury either from home or the office.

Some of your employees may be living with their families or parents. Some may have kids. Some may not have their own work desk at home, or where they’re traveling at the moment. 

Whatever their situation is, offer flexibility to your employees. There might be times when they need to take their kids to the doctor, run an urgent errand, or can’t open their video camera because the kids are running around the house, or they have a weak internet connection. 

Whatever the situation may be, seek to understand them. A remote team leader can recognize and empathize with employees and how they manage both their work and personal lives at home.

Provide Opportunities for Socialization Outside of Work

If you work with a multicultural team, it’s really difficult to create meetups and other events that require physical presence. But if your distributed team is located in the same city or country, you can still set up a meetup and have a great time.

When working in an office, it’s easy to gather the team to have a lunch-out or a team dinner. It was easy to pull a team member for a quick catch-up at the nearby café. 

With a hybrid or remote team, that’s not so easy. Still, it’s possible to host online icebreakers and other activities that will promote culture sharing and help your team to get to know each other, ultimately strengthening your collaboration and communication. 

You can start by scheduling a 30-minute coffee catch-up with your team members, host a lunch break together, or hold one with smaller groups and convene via a video conference. Hold remote team building activities and remote team celebrations. 

As you grow as a team, you’ll also want to reward their hard work. If the situation permits, use your budget for teams to meet up personally, and have a blast. If the teams live relatively close, it’s easy to host such events when the teams live close by. 

Still, if they are distributed in different locations, it’d be best to host this meetup at a location that is the closest to their home, or wherever they work. 

These pockets of opportunity for team members to socialize and discuss non-work-related things will help establish and strengthen their bond. Effective remote team leaders can enable a smoother working relationship and team dynamic through socialization and team building.

Show Empathy and Genuine Concern

Working remotely creates the wrong impression that your employees have got it easy because they are living a dream life, working from any location in the world. But it’s not always like that. 

This is one trap you should not fall into. As with offering flexibility to employees, you should also show empathy and genuine concern. 

Be empathic about how they are struggling to keep it together – both on their personal and professional obligations. Show genuine concern for their well-being and career growth. 

And when your employees feel and see your sincerity, you get to build trust and put down the barriers that can be brought by remote working. This will make you more effective in being a remote team leader.

Why You Need to Invest in Remote Work Tools

All of the seven tips above cannot be implemented if you don’t have the right remote work tools. Technology will be your most important weapon to combat remote work challenges. My bonus tip to become an effective remote team leader is investing in remote work collaboration tools.

At the minimum you should have the following remote work tools to help your team be more productive:

• Team communication and messaging – e.g. Slack
• Video conferencing – e.g. Zoom
• Task and Project Management – e.g. Kanban Zone
• File sharing – e.g. Google Drive

These are the core remote tools that you need to invest in. This will make it easier for your team to work together, even if they are not co-located. A task and project management tool like Kanban Zone, for example, will make it easier for everyone to know what each is working on. 

You as the remote team leader will also have an easier way of managing and tracking your team’s work without being a micromanager. 

You can also explore these productivity tools for your teams and equip them to conquer remote working. 

Become a Better Remote Team Leader with Portfolio Kanban

Managers need to add effective remote team leaders to their list of skill sets. You can better ensure your team’s success, happiness, and engagement at work by applying the eight tips to be a better remote team leader. The future is remote. And now is the perfect time to start shaping the future of your remote team. 

Try Kanban Zone free or book a free complimentary coaching session where we’ll help you make the best out of Kanban Zone, your productivity, and your process efficiency.