How to Manage a Teleworking Team?

Without a doubt, the Covid-19 pandemic has catapulted the teleworking modality. There are those who have already been doing it for some time to a greater or lesser extent, but for some it has been something new.

For those in middle and management positions, the real challenge is not only this modality, but the effective management of their work teams remotely. Managing teams is a complex task in itself, but doing it remotely is a great challenge, especially if it has not been done before.

8 Tips for Managing a Teleworking Team

Although most people have returned to their workplaces in person, this has become much more flexible. Therefore, below we describe some tips that could help you when managing remote teams:

1. Clearly Define Objectives

When working remotely, there are cases in which it is not necessary to adhere to a fixed schedule, except for positions such as customer service, etc. Therefore, to manage a team that is not physically present, you must base your efforts on results. That is, clearly define the objectives and let the team members choose how to organize themselves. What matters here is that the work is done correctly and that the established times are met.

As a team leader, it is your responsibility to concretely define the responsibilities and goals for each team member. This will avoid misunderstandings and ambiguities if we follow the SMART method:

➤ Specific

➤ Measurable

➤ Achievable

➤ Challengers

➤ With deadlines

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2. Manage Performance

Managing performance and giving feedback is crucial in remote teams, and arguably even more important. You need to be able to monitor whether or not your team is achieving the set goals. For that reason, establish ways to measure progress, give feedback and guide them in a timely manner. How you do this will depend on:

➤ The activity

➤ Type of company

➤ Preferences of each team

It is possible to establish KPIs , daily or weekly reports, video calls, etc. To achieve better results, it is advisable to agree with your team on the parameters and how to do this monitoring.

3. Generate a Trustworthy and Committed Environment

When we have a team working remotely, it is essential to first build a culture of trust, responsibility and commitment. This usually does not happen overnight, it will largely depend on you.

4. Motivational Leadership

Practicing healthy and motivating leadership is key to creating high-performance teams. If you are one of those leaders who empowers the team, you can be sure that everyone will achieve positive results. Working remotely can be hard for some team members, which is where you need to be able to provide each team member with what they need. Some may need more guidance, others more freedom.

You must remain attentive to the needs of each person, and when in doubt, ask them how you can help them.

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5. Communication

Good communication is crucial for a team to function properly, and even more so when members are not in the same location. When we work remotely, we lose physical and visual contact with the workplace, so it is important to implement processes and tools that ensure that everyone receives the information properly.

To do this, it is advisable to establish certain rules with the team:

➤ Means of communication, whether email, phone, video call, Telegram, WhatsApp, etc.

➤ How emergencies will be communicated.

➤ What will be the platforms, frequency and participants of the videoconference meetings?

➤ Use of chats for spontaneous communications.

➤ Conflict management.

➤ Monitoring of ongoing projects.

6. Collaborative Work Tools

In teleworking teams, when there are tasks where several members are involved in the same task, it is important to rely on tools that speed up collaborative work .

Some tools that will be very useful to you are:

➤ For virtual meetings: Skype, Zoom, Google Meet.

➤ To manage projects: Trello, Slack, Asana.

➤ To share files: Dropbox, Google Drive.

➤ To send large files: WeTransfer.

7. Training

For some team members, teleworking may be something completely new and means a big change in the way they do their daily activities. Using tools to manage tasks can be overwhelming for our collaborators. To facilitate the flow of work and communication, it is ideal to provide training and coaching for the use of the new technologies that will be used. Of course, this training must be adapted to the needs of each member.

However, if there are already team members who have knowledge and experience with these tools, you can rely on them to serve as mentors or as their peers. This way we speed up training and promote teamwork.

8. Manage Cultural Diversity

We may work remotely with professionals from other countries, so it is important to keep in mind that there will be cultural differences, which could become a source of conflict. Therefore, it is essential to keep an open mind in the face of any misunderstandings. Some of these misunderstandings may arise as a result of language. Therefore, we recommend that you summarize the main issues after a call.

If you work with a multicultural team, we recommend that you educate yourself on possible cultural differences among members and cultivate an open mindset within the team.

In short, teleworking is in vogue and it is essential that we are prepared and trained to adapt to this way of working. Let's prepare and optimize remote work.

If you want to expand your knowledge to effectively manage your Teleworking Teams , you can enroll in our course. Start Today .