Working Remote: Tips for Leaders and Teams Who Don't Usually Work Remote (and Even Those That Do)

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Contrary to popular belief, working with an entirely remote team, even for a short term, is going to be the hardest adjustment for the managers and leaders. I'm writing this during the COVID-19 virus pandemic, to hopefully give some tips and ideas to teams and leaders who aren't 'used to' this type of remote work, and hopefully make it better for the many people who suddenly find themselves working from home and wouldn't have even thought of doing it a week ago... and they don't know what to do and expect.

Firstly, don't stress yourself out. Business will go on, it's just going to be a little different for a while. Might it help change the opinions of Corporate America with respect to Remote Work? Maybe. Probably it will, at least a little bit. But we all have to make it work now, and show it works well first. Unfortunately, we find ourselves in the remote situation and need to show it works.. without much planning. Your team suddenly implemented a BC/DR (Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery) plan for remote work and they are working hard to do it, but VPN's and controls sometimes take time. Bear with them. MOST companies have never tested this part of a BC/DR plan - so newsflash, it's new to them too.

Ok, now to the meat of what I wanted to talk about:

Look at the scenario from another view: Culture flows from the top down. Hopefully you have an amazing leader, and your culture in the office is amazing and you can't wait to get back. While working from home (or remote if you aren't home) may hopefully help society and slow the spread of the virus, help the load on hospitals etc (BIG kudos here for the hospital workers who are working overtime or about to), the new remote working activity WILL amplify the worst parts of your companies culture. The CoronaVirus is a burden for business, but over time that will go away. The memory of how you treated your team will not. Culture is important. It's a bit harder right now, but not impossible, and IT IS WORTH THE EFFORT, so just do everything you can to help it continue in the current scenarios.

TIPS for Leading Remote Teams

This isn't a holiday. Your team is stressed worrying about being present 9-5 and you need to dispel this ASAP. Working remote (especially with all of the schools being closed etc) brings distractions they don't want either and you need to iterate it's OK. While ideal work from home conditions don't include caring for kids too, this will be unavoidable for some of us during this period. It's going to take some of us away from our laptops to direct e-learning, to break up fights, and get them outside to play so everyone doesn't go crazy at home during the 9-5. Just something to be mindful of. The leaders need to remember this as much as our teams do.

Despite companies worrying about keeping the lights on and productivity, etc, people often work more than 9-5 to try to quell their managers concerns. That doesn't make it quality work. Encourage your team to communicate more, adjust hours a little to make it easier, give them some flexibility. Pick quality of work time over being convenient for yourself as a leader.

Everyone will have slightly different personal schedules and distractions. Try to choose an 'All Access' time where people can collaborate with ease. If you already have a weekly 'Town Hall' or 'Team Meeting' try to keep that same time. Keeping previous habits and processes in place is good. Highly recommended even. If you don't have a weekly meetings with your teams... Start. Today.

If you aren't having DAILY calls WITH VIDEO already... START NOW. Your teams need Human interaction. It will quell your concerns, remind you that your team is made of humans and not just a slack bot. Some teams will stay on Google Hangouts or slack video all day, some will only do it once a day, there will be a huge variance in this. So long as something is happening, work with them, trust them. You should be having a VIDEO call with your team leads, your leads with their teams. Opt for Video calls whenever possible with any team chat.

Managers need to remind yourself that your team is working from a task list, and your new remote 'checkins' (many call this badgering or micromanaging) can bring them off-task. When you're a remote employee, tasks that come through with little thought from managers can seem urgent, when they aren't. Managers need to be conscious of this and communicate well.

If you are not aware of this, everything you type in a non-human chat system (like Slack, or Microsoft Teams) does NOT convey your tone, so it ALWAYS comes off stronger than you intended. Over-communicate with gratitude, and lose the attitude.

Work hard to set your expectations and deadlines. If you clearly communicate what your success and deadlines are, working from home isn't a problem, you may find it is a benefit even to hit the goals. LEADERS HAVE TO WORK HARDER ON THIS.

Some of you don't know how to work in a scenario like this. At all. Let me give you a super mini rundown of agile/scrum 'ish work for teams that may help you get started. Set WEEKLY goals for your team. Communicate them in a Monday morning video chat (don't do it at 8am, more like 9 - we all need coffee and email time) to your team leads. They will then take your goals, rework them to turn them into smaller tasks, and have a smaller team video chat (say, 11am) with their teams. Let them be. Each day, do a 15 min 'video standup' with your leads, and have them do a 15 min 'video standup' with their teams to keep everything on track. Remember, your goal is to be their Snowplow. Find what their blockers or problems will be that day or week and go plow that problem out of their way so they can keep working. Ok, so that was overly simplified, I know. But it's a truth that we need to be reminded that we don't hover over their desks in the office, so we don't need to do it remotely either (and can't and shouldn't anyway).

In short (I know, that's hard for me to do). Everything will go on. Culture and Business will go on. You WILL have challenges, and you WILL figure it out. So will your team. You need to trust them. Now. Life will get back to normal. Right now, normal is just different.

Some of this was adopted from other articles, I did not re-post anything to infringe or steal, but rather I felt the need to expand on them, reword to fit my thinking, and to remind myself the things that I need to do... Now.

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