Manage Remote Teams Effectively — A simple guide
Many technical team leaders are still figuring out an effective way to manage a remote team. Here is my simple formula.
If you go to Quora.com and search for management tips, you will see at least couple of questions on,
# how to better mange remote team?
# what are the different tools used for managing remote team?
# secret method to manage remote team
and so on.
It has been at least 3years since WFH became popular, but why many technical leaders are still struggling to manage remote teams?
Is it because of,
- trust issues or
- lack of training or
- lack of communication or
- lack of expectation setting or
- not feeling the control over team members?
Well, I am not able to make a guess. If you know what could be the reason, let me know in the comments section below.
Even though I prefer working from office, due to the advantages it come with (nobody needs an explanation about it), I suggest fellow managers and leaders to find ways to manage a remote teams, as it is going to be the norm going forward.
You can’t escape from the fact that most of the younger generation skilled resources want to work from home.
So, here is my simple formula that I have been using for last 3years. There could be flaws in this, but I feel relatively less worried.
F.I.T.T.E.R Formula
I am been using this for past 3years. If you search in internet, you may not find it anywhere. But this is a shorter version or simple version of what rest of the blogs talk about.
I am not talking about something totally new; I have just packed it in the right way, which works for me.
Let me explain further.
Being Flexible (F):
Since all of us are working from home, Leads and managers must understand that helping the family at home becomes an additional responsibility for everyone including yourself.
So acknowledge this fact and be flexible while setting up meetings.
Have Ice breaker session (I):
Once in a while organise fun session either by HR team, or yourself by becoming little creative. This helps the team to come out of the work and have a good moment.
This will help you to build a better bond with the team and among themselves. This bond becomes stronger over time.
A stronger bond at both sides will help to solve complex problems, irrespective what is the mode of working.
Use Collaboration Tools (T):
Avoid meetings! Instead use collaboration tools like Slack, Teams to chat and get information or share information.
Many meetings in a day will create frustration among your team members as they start loosing time to complete their task. So avoid unnecessary meetings.
Track regularly (T):
Use project management tools like JIRA, Trello, Asana etc. as effectively as possible. Creating a strong process for tracking the progress and building a habit within the team member to update the tasks will help you in many ways.
This will make you feel in control and team members are free from all status update meetings, a true win-win.
Set regularly expectation (E):
Every team member must be reminded about goals and awareness of following process. So setting the right expectation with team members about the benefits of teams process, goals will help you to ease the pressure of not being in control.
Communicate regularly (R):
Consistent communication with the team members, be it in the form of 1-on-1 or weekly meetings, is at most important.
If you are not doing so, then do it to gather information which you need to feel in control.
Having regular communication with the team members when the operating mode is remote will help any team lead or manager.
The above approach has helped in many ways. This may have loop holes but has worked for me and the team I work with. Both sides there is trust, a strong bond and clear communication channel to share issues, risks, progress without any hesitation.
Try it out and let me know your experience.
Further reads:
