Crafting Connection and Building Culture in Your Remote Team
Building connection and creating a distinctive culture will be far harder with a remote team. You must take the lead in making efforts to communicate well.
Watching this video is worth 1 Management Courses CPD Point*.
(See below for more details)
This video is part of course module number 4.3.5
Program 4: Managing & Leading Groups
Course 3: Teams
Section 5: Managing Remote Teams
Other videos in this section include:
🎬 Introduction to Managing Remote Teams
🔗 https://youtu.be/YsO_GuEjlBo
🎬 Creating Trust in Remote Teams
🔗 https://youtu.be/DBPFFZFePAk
🎬 Helping Build Understanding in Your Remote Team
🔗 https://youtu.be/ESF_5m45DKk
🎬 Fostering Responsibility within Your Remote Team
🔗 https://youtu.be/FpjOKvbZl58
🎬 Maintaining Productivity in Your Remote Team
🔗 https://youtu.be/Na30W6Dti9g
🎬 Getting Sufficient Challenge in Your Remote Team
🔗 https://youtu.be/cEareagQg9Q
🎬 Developing the People in Your Remote Team
🔗 https://youtu.be/oTpkqxeXcdE
🎬 Taking Care of the Wellbeing of People in Your Remote Team
🔗 https://youtu.be/6psjuxxtYps
LESSON NOTES
Engage with everyone in your remote team, frequently. Otherwise, it is all too easy to create a two-tier structure to your team:
• those who are near you, and
• the others, who are far away
Boost frequent virtual communication with in-person visits. If your budget allows, you should:
• Bring remote team members to your hub
• Personally visit members of your virtual team
Establish a regular communication cycle. Communication can be difficult; especially when people are communicating:
• over long distances
• at the ends of their working day
• in a language that is not their first language
‘Little and often’ can be a good guide. Weekly short meetings are better than fortnightly longer meetings.
Think in terms of both team and individual communication. Encourage person-to-person calls between colleagues as a regular part of working.
When you schedule team communication across multiple time zones, be sensitive to the time of day for different team members. If you cannot avoid unsocial hours for some team members, try to rotate the burden.
Face-to-face is the gold-standard for human communication. For that reason:
• An all hands get together beats
• video conferencing, beats
• audio-only teleconferencing, beats
• text-based messaging
Remember that ‘email is the worst form of communication devised by humans, bar none’.
Recognition and Rewards
Recognizing contributions and rewarding successes are valuable ways to create a team ritual.
The Value of Structured Virtual Team Meetings
Keep remote team meetings as short as you can – ideally to 30 minutes or less. But encourage informal chat time at either end of formal meetings. To make the structured part go well, circulate key points, an agenda, and the names of participants in advance.
RECOMMENDED EXERCISE
1. What is the state of your remote team’s culture? Where are the weak points in the connection within it? (2 MC CPD Points)
2. Develop a plan for strengthening connection within your virtual team, and so building a more robust team culture. (3 MC CPD Points)
3. Follow your plan and review progress after 2-4 weeks (3 MC CPD Points)
4. Repeat from step 2
DOWNLOADS
Free Resources
– CPD Tools – https://gum.co/MC-CPD
Paid resources
– Management Courses Onboarding Kit – https://gum.co/MC-ObK ($3)
RECOMMENDED READING
– The Five Dysfunctions of a Team https://geni.us/wbIE
– The Wisdom of Teams https://geni.us/7i1AL
– The Belbin Guide to Succeeding at Work https://geni.us/Kzc4GV4
– Dream Teams: Working Together Without Falling Apart https://geni.us/oAgEOdA
– Pulling Together: 10 Rules for High-Performance Teamwork https://geni.us/zUVV3G
– HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Teams https://geni.us/0DLsNe4
Managers need a basic set of kit to do your job well. Here are my top recommendations: https://kit.co/MikeClayton/manager-s-work-kit (the links are affiliated)
Management Courses Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Points
=======================================================
You can record your Management Courses CPD points on our free, downloadable CPD record log.
Download it at: https://gum.co/MC-CPD
Each video has two levels of MC CPD points. For this video:
– If you simply watched the video, record 1 MC CPD points
– If you also carried out all of the recommended exercises, score a total of 9 MC CPD points
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Note:
Links to our book recommendations are affiliated through Amazon
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