Career advice, insights & tips for HR professionals

How do you manage remote teams? 14/09/2011

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Remote effectiveness
Remote communication
Cultural Intelligence in Business Masterclass

Remote effectiveness

On the face of it, managing a remote team doesn’t sound like it should be that much harder than managing a face-to-face team. After all, we have a whole industry of modern technology to assist us – mobile phones, teleconferenceing, videpoconferencing and webcams. Yet the very fact that we feel the need to create even more sophisticated technologies such as telepresence (where you can almost believe you’re in the same room as the person you’re seeing) should tell us something about how strong our desire is to feel we’re in the same vicinity as the other person.

Not surprising, then, that research has found that it takes something like four times as long to communicate a message electronically as it does to communicate it face-to-face. So every time you reach for your email, be prepared to wait a little longer and work a little harder before the message is accurately received the other end. And it’s not just communication effectiveness that is impaired by remote working – it also takes a bit longer for us to establish trust with someone we can’t see. This is OK in long-term teams, but when quick turn-around is needed in a new team, trust is a tricky issue. Not only does it take us two weeks longer to establish trust with someone we can’t see, but that trust is also more fragile – we’re more likely to lose our faith in remote team members than people we see in the flesh.

Remote communication

It’s not all doom-and-gloom though. There are things that you can do in order to manage your remote team more effectively.

Our five top tips are:

1. Use the 'information-richest' form of media available to communicate – face-to-face where possible, followed by telepresence or video conference, then telephone. Ideally, email should only be used to convey sizeable amounts of information, specific data, or as a last resort.

2. Encourage spontaneous, informal communication between your team members. The use of tools such as Skye helps people to feel more in touch with their colleagues and makes it easier for them to reach out to each other with quick questions.

3. Make time for socialising during remote discussions. Time for small talk becomes much more important when people don’t get to catch up with each simply by wandering past the other person’s desk.

4. Overtly discuss the skills a new member of the team is bringing, as well as the latest achievements and successes of current team members. This will help to strengthen trust between remote team members.

5. Avoid 'virtual silence'. Encourage the team to acknowledge messages they have received from one another when they don’t have time to deal with it there and then. Misinterpretation of virtual silence can result in people assuming the other person isn’t working as hard as they should or that they don’t care about the message that has just been sent.

Cultural Intelligence in Business Masterclass

Nic will be talking about the effective management of remote global teams in her free Masterclass on Cultural Intelligence in Business. The 2-hour Masterclass is being held in London on 19th October. For more information go to www.pearnkandola.com or call 01865 399 060.