Tips for managing teams working remotely (whether you do it all the time or are relatively new at it)

(should be pretty quick to read)

A lot of us are staying home from our offices, client locations, business travel, corporate events, and other places we used to work. Some of us may do this a lot of the time, and some of us may just be trying it out because new restrictions on gatherings and travel.

At IBM, we've been managing geographically dispersed teams and working "remotely" for a long time. As with many theories of management and business thinking, the pendulum has swung back and forth: at times, working remotely was strongly encouraged, then later discouraged, and then encouraged again. Like many of you, I've worked on and managed global teams across time zones so disparate we couldn't all get on the phone at the same time. I've also had a wonderful team that met in the office each day, and even gathered around pastries a few afternoons a week to brainstorm (we had a blast, and got a lot done, too). I've managed at least one employee whom I didn't even get to meet in person for the first six months we worked together. I've also been lucky enough to lead teams charged with building community across tens of thousands of people, helping to engage, motivate, educate, enable, and mobilize them around the world. In the process, I've learned some things about what works well, and what works less well.

A friend recently asked me to share some thoughts about how to work with teams remotely -- both as a manager and as a team member. After I jotted down some ideas, I thought it might be helpful to share them in a post, in case others find them useful. And, indeed, I hope you do.

Remember, we are all still human

One thing people often seem to forget when we move to technology-enabled remote work is that we are still human beings. There is no substitute for in-person interaction. That said, experience has shown that after good working relationships have been established in person, they can be effectively reinforced virtually, and the trust and sense of mutual accountability forged in person can form the basis of effective remote working relationships. Intuitively, most of us think that in-person is best; next-best is video interaction, where at least some facial and postural cues are there to guide interactions; then voice-only; with e-mail and chat last.

If you work with a team all the time and have ongoing relationships, you don't usually need to get all dressed up and style your hair so you can sit on a videoconference. People definitely appreciate being able to join audio-only team meetings in their pajamas while drinking their first coffee of the day.

Though many people hate to pick up the phone these days, a phone call can still be much more efficient than written communication. E-mail is tone deaf -- and even limited aural cues such as tone during a phone call can help provide people with important context during a discussion. And things can be discussed, questioned, and resolved in "real-time" during a phone call, vs. going back and forth in a long chain of e-mails or texts. 

The flip side is for teams dispersed across different time zones or just working different hours, when the asynchronous nature of e-mail or stream chat can still allow people to have a good back-and-forth rhythm and be productive in ways that would be frustratingly difficult if they had to try to find time to get on the phone together. And if people working remotely now find themselves with children or older relatives at home to care for, they will appreciate being able to log on and catch up on work at times that work best with their caregiving responsibilities, which likely will be during different hours than they might have spent in the office.

Good management doesn't change (much) when teams work remotely

Whether teams are working remotely or in person, we all need to remember that people still want: 

• Clear direction and feedback
• Positive reinforcement
• Recognition for their contributions
• Opportunities to work autonomously or with other like-minded individuals without micromanagement from above
• A sense that they are doing meaningful work
• A feeling of contributing to something bigger than themselves
• A sense of progress toward a goal or milestone
• The opportunity to learn and develop
• A feeling of positive personal trajectory and mobility
• Peers who are supportive and who "have their back"
• The feeling of belonging to a team or workgroup
• A workgroup where they are trusted and feel they can trust their peers and manager

All these things can be communicated, developed, and reinforced with remote teams -- it just takes more focus and proactive engagement to foster a sense of teaming, celebrate success, provide appropriate feedback and support, etc. when it's being done virtually. Continue to invite peers to celebrate each other's successes and contributions virtually, just as you encourage management to do so. And get a good set of emoji and gifs -- with perhaps some images customized for your team -- to encourage people to laugh and blow off steam (appropriately) in your private workgroup channels online.

Remote meetings should be useful meetings, but make time for personal interaction

Good "remote" meetings are not that different from good in-person meetings: have an agenda, don't talk over people, respect people's time, recap outcomes to ensure consensus and understanding, and assign follow-ups. Keep an ear out for the tone of discourse: make sure the perceived distance engendered by "virtual" interaction doesn't lead people to be impolite or disrespectful of colleagues. If part of the meeting intent is to solicit input, then make sure it is solicited from everyone, since some people don't always speak up on their own. If someone isn't saying much, be sure to check in with them and find out if they are on board or perhaps have reservations (or just need to be called back from their multitasking).

If you have weekly checkpoint or check-in calls, take time at the beginning to ask people about their weekends or plans for the upcoming break, etc. Things that would happen more "organically" in passing when people are together in person require a bit more focus and guidance to foster via virtual channels. So don't neglect the personal moments. Even if it feels odd (or like a waste of time) at first, once you set the expectation that it will happen weekly, people start to be ready to talk a bit about themselves and even to look forward to it.

For example, our team has a humorous "theme of the week" that one of our leaders shares during our Friday calls, which is a nice way to look back over the previous week and summarize a particular feeling or sense of accomplishment, etc. In a time of stress or crisis, these kinds of regular opportunities to share humor and personal connection are even more important, and can help people feel less isolated. They also can help normalize what definitely does not feel like a normal work experience to anyone right now -- because we are all in it, together.

Use tools, yes . . . but not too many tools*

Put together a suite of tools -- videoconferencing, online chat (with dedicated "channels" for teams and projects), audio conferencing, shared online working tools like shared folders for storing documents relevant to specific projects and teams, shared online bulletin boards, collaborative document creation and markup, shared collaboration spaces for brainstorming, shared calendars, and even work-management/workflow tools (like an Asana) etc. As always, suit the tool to the task. A lot of these tools are available free online, but most businesses that are planning to have teams working remotely regularly will want the extra security and control that comes with paid working tools.

However useful they may be by design, in practice, tools are only as useful as the people using them decide they are going to make them, so management needs to lead and set the tone. If the executives don't use it, or at least the managers, the team won't want to use it, either. So make sure management is visible and using the same tools the team is asked to use.

But don't go crazy with the latest new technologies. Remember, every new tool is just one more place to check, and potentially one more distraction. So don't sign on to use tools just because they are there -- be thoughtful about which ones you choose, ask the team for feedback, and discard any that you don't really need. If you try out tools as a team, you can build consensus for which ones are the most helpful, and quickly shift work to those while you move away from less useful tools.

In our team, we have some great collaboration tools, such as (in no particular order): Webex for videoconferencing (from our strategic partner, Cisco), Box for sharing documents and notes (IBM also has a partnership with them), e-mail, Slack for chat, and Quip for shared calendars, agendas, and other documents (from Salesforce, another strategic partner). Since I am in the Strategic Partnerships group at IBM, I also should mention that we use Workday, SAP, Samsung, Microsoft, and Apple every day to get work done, too -- and they all enable us to work remotely, of course.

Oh, no you can't . . .

One last thing: we all think we can multitask. Sure -- I can scan e-mail while I also respond to chats, follow a conference call and the relevant presentation, and maybe hunt for some elusive hand sanitizer online. But that's not how our brains work. So resist the temptation to jump around too much. Make sure team members set aside time in their days for focused work. If you are one of those people whose calendars fill up with back-to-back meetings, block out some time on your calendar for real work, and zealously protect it. It's too easy to get distracted by the supposedly urgent, only to find that we haven't gotten around to the really impactful work we all want to do.

Like so much in life, working remotely with a team is about finding a good balance. Practice good management, use the tools that work for your team, ensure that you are being efficient and work gets done, and also leave time for the personal interactions that build trust and teamwork (and help us all stay a little less stressed in these challenging times).

*With apologies to the late Carrie Donovan

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