Speaker 1: Managing people is hard enough on its own, but when you throw in being remote, it gets even more difficult. So before you go trying to make sure you're a good remote manager, make sure that you've got the basics of management down. Now in general, that's going to include building the right kind of systems, making sure that you're supporting your people, and providing some coaching. If you're not sure if you're a good manager or not, you may want to subscribe and check out some of our other content, because this video is all about the challenges and solutions to managing remote teams. Now I've been working with remote teams since before it was cool, and over the years I've found four main challenges. We're going to talk about those challenges, and then we're going to throw out some solutions. So let's dive right in. Challenge number one is visibility. Now when you work with people on a day-to-day basis, visibility is baked in. But when you work remotely, visibility is lost, and that can lead to issues with trust and empathy and accountability. And let's be honest, there's a lot more potential distractions in a home environment than there are in an office environment, and some people are just going to take advantage of the fact that nobody can tell what they're doing. Challenge number two is connection. When we're in person, we naturally get connection with other people because we see them on a daily basis. But when we work from home, we don't see our colleagues, and that can lead to challenges with our energy and with our morale, which in turn can lead to lower productivity, lower quality, and all sorts of other issues. We also build stronger bonds with people when we see them in person. In fact, I've seen where teams that are split between two locations will form strong bonds in each location, but won't form strong bonds between the two segments. So we have to be very cognizant of those issues with connection as we work with remote teams. Challenge number three is communication. Again, we lose a lot of the natural connection points when we work from home. When we work in the office, we can overhear a conversation that could be by our desks or in the hallway or at the water cooler or at the coffee pot. We can go to lunch with people. We just have way more opportunities to communicate. The other thing that happens with communication is that when people are remote, they tend to use text a lot more. And that actually happens in our offices as well, but we lose that ability to communicate face-to-face in person when we aren't in the office. So we have to be, again, very cognizant of the potential impacts. Challenge number four is connectivity. Everybody who has worked from home for a while has experienced some sort of connectivity issue. It could either be on the office side or on your home side or something in between. If your office connection is slow, it sends the message that your time as an employee or as a contributor is not valuable. And that will destroy your morale. It will destroy your productivity. It will destroy all of those key metrics that you're looking for. So what do we do about all this? Effective managers do a couple of things. One, they set clear objectives. And two, they get people to take as much ownership as possible. And one of the ways you can get people to take ownership is by helping them to set team norms. So assuming that you've already got your clear goals, here's a few of the things or a few of the areas where you can help your teams set some norms when they're working remotely. So one area that you can get your team to set some norms around is the internet connection standards. Now this is going to apply both on the office side and the home side. So what you can do is ask your team how much bandwidth do you need and how long should certain things take when you're working from home. As a manager, you can take those standards that they set and run that up the chain in the organization to get some traction on improving that connectivity and that bandwidth. Now that's going to generate a ton of support for your organization. It's going to show people that you care about them, that you value them, and that you're trying to do what you can to support them. Now on the other side, on the home side, if the team sets some standards, then you can analyze if everybody has a good enough connection. And if they can't afford it, maybe the organization can actually pay for an internet upgrade or you can work out some sort of other solutions. Again, it's going to build support, it's going to build trust, and it's going to build all sorts of great metrics at the end of the day. Area number two is home office standards. Now I understand this could be a little bit touchy because, you know, it's people's homes. But look, we set standards for our office space when we're in a collaborative environment. Why would we also not have some standards for a home office? If people don't have that thing, you can help them get it. But look, key areas to focus on here are potentially what sort of equipment do they have? Do people have the right kind of space where they can have the quiet time that they need? And this is the team setting the standards, it's not you. So that makes it a little bit more acceptable. People's office space is going to have major impacts on their productivity and their ability to deliver. So it's something that the team and you as a manager should definitely care about. Area number three is chat and email standards. Now when you work from home, you lose the visibility and you can lose trust. One way to keep that trust strong and to create more visibility and to create more of a team environment is to have standards around your chat and email. And specific areas that you can target are things like when should you be online, what happens if you go away, and how long should it be before people can expect a response in general. And by setting these standards and these norms, people don't have to guess. They can have certain perceptions when you don't know, but when you have clarity around what to expect, it's going to keep that trust strong. Area number four is your virtual meeting standards. Now we shouldn't just assume that the standards we have for our in-person meetings are going to work for our virtual meetings or that people are going to follow them in the same ways. So definitely take some time here to set some new norms for virtual meetings. Now one of the main areas of contention for virtual meetings is whether or not to use the camera. The short answer to that is you should use the camera because 55% of our communication is actually visual. So that means if we're not using it, we're down to a 45% communication efficiency. And yes, I know there's some nuances, but you want to give yourself every advantage possible. These team norms are not something that the manager is going to dictate. As a manager, you want to facilitate your team coming up with these norms. You want to make sure that they're coming up with the best things possible, but you want to do that by asking the right questions. Because if you mandate these norms, then it's a push. And when people get pushed, they push back and they resist. And that will lead to one of two things. Either one, people aren't going to follow the norms, or two, they're going to have resentment for the norms. And neither one of those are situations that you want to have. How do you do this in a way that's going to lead to good results? Well, it's all about how you ask the question. If we're talking about the camera, for instance, you wouldn't ask whether or not your team wants to use the camera. You would ask, what is more effective? Is it more effective to use a camera or not? And see, that turns it from an opinion and a desire into an analytical discussion about what's best, which is really where you want to be. And if people don't come up with the right solution or the best solution right away, that's okay. One, what you think is best may not actually be best. But two, by letting people make mistakes or letting people make decisions that may not be optimal, you're actually building ownership. So let them come up with things on their own. Let them come up with ideas that may or may not work and let them experiment, but then circle back. Because these team norms aren't something that are going to sit there forever. In fact, they should be changing on a regular basis. So schedule a session a few weeks after the first session to check in to see how effective those norms are and if they should change. In fact, do that on a regular basis. Every couple of months, at least you should be revisiting your team norms. Now, as a manager, again, you're trying to set up a system that generates the right results. And one of the best things I've found to implement into your system for great results is the daily standup meeting. The daily standup is just a 15-minute sync up at most between the team where they collaborate on how to get their work done for the day. And you can check out all sorts of videos on YouTube or on the web about how to do these. And heck, I may even have a video of my own up by the time you're watching this. Another great way to boost team performance is to use team events. There are a ton of options for doing virtual team events just to get together and have some fun. For instance, you could do a Mad Libs online or you could do a virtual happy hour or you could play a game like Drawful. Collaboration tools are also important. In fact, they are essential when you're working with remote teams. And as a manager, it's your job to make sure that your team has the tools it needs to be effective. So the first thing that we're going to touch on is the one that everybody knows about. It is the video conferencing system. And look, you know, it doesn't matter if you're using Skype or Zoom or WebEx or Google Hangouts or Google Meet or whatever, as long as it meets your team's need. But if it doesn't, then your team should come up with a list of what their needs are and you should help them get what they need. There are a ton of online collaboration options. Microsoft has come out with Microsoft Teams, which I hear is actually really good, even though I haven't used it yet. And in the Agile space, I feel like there's a new collaboration tool every single month for everything from the retrospectives to the planning sessions to doing sizing and points and meetings. These things are just coming out of the woodwork. If you don't know what any of those are and you'd like to, feel free to give us a call or shoot us an email and we'd love to tell you all about them. You can also check out some of our other online content to learn more about how to be a great manager and build effective and high performance teams. So if you got something valuable out of this video, hit that thumbs up to let us know and make sure to hit that subscribe button and ring the bell to get all the latest notifications. Until next time, thanks for watching.