I had a sales call a few weeks ago and heard the following statements…
‘I believe everyone needs to be in the office’
‘People are too distracted when they work from home’
‘I don’t trust work will be done efficiently’
What are your REAL thoughts about working with virtual teams?
Before I started The CEO Partner, I worked in the corporate finance world. Where commuting over an hour each way and working with large teams in an office setting is the norm.
In the morning I would walk into the office, past reception, up to the 3rd floor and head to my section on the floor passing a few empty cubicles, along the way.
Most times teams are seated next to each other to encourage engagement and make communication easy.
As a Senior Financial Systems Analyst I was required to travel often and wasn’t in the office much. This is where working remotely became a huge benefit. I learned some of the best ways to be effective and keep team members engaged during my 15+ days on the road every month.
You want a high performance team… you have to train them!
From my experience, when a CEO gets to the point of bringing on support it’s usually because they are stretched for time and are not able to meet goals with the current resources.
The #1 hesitation I hear when people are ready to hire is that they aren’t going to find someone to do the job as well as them. And that is the truth. You won’t find someone with the same passion for your company as you. But you can find someone who will finish the job efficiently
The next thing I always hear is I don’t have time to hire. The end result is to take work on my plate but it will take 2-3 weeks to get into a flow.
#truthtalk
All teams require training. That includes virtual or local teams.
Having the proper protocols in place to get your new team members ramped up will lower frustration and provide clarity on expectations for everyone.
Ways to train a virtual team to be efficient, effective and engaging.
Document your process.
Start by creating a list of tasks for each role based on the Job Description you used to hire. Turn that task list into the step-by-step actions required to execute their job efficiently in their role.
This will allow you to create a training plan for new team members. Also provides the team with a guide to refer to daily.
Establish clear communication channels.
It’s about the right message, the right medium, and at the right time. There are countless ways to communicate throughout the day, from email, call, text, and messenger. Communication breakdown can cause rework or project delays if things are not clear.
Document a Communications Plan that states best practices for how your team use your different channels to communicate, for example:
- Email – To communicate externally with clients and partners. Not used for task management.
- Slack – Share quick updates on work in progress tasks, client updates, celebrations, and quick check-ins.
- Google Drive – Internal & client project documents
- Teamwork PM – Active project tasks questions, challenges, and updates.
Communication is the key to building a successful team. Effective communication is open, clear, collaborative, and through. Being consistent in how you communicate in how you communicate will set a calm and responsible tone for your team.
Schedule consistent meetings.
Having scheduled consistent meetings allows your team to know what’s happening and when to prepare.
Here are a few types of meetings you can incorporate:
- Morning Huddle – A short 20 min daily check-in to review what is on your plate for the day and what support is needed to complete it.
- Weekly All Team Check-in – A standard meeting to review all projects status.
- Monthly 1:1 – An intimate check-in between an individual team member and manager to measure happiness and growth.
- Quarterly Business Review – This is an opportunity to review what’s working and what’s not working with the full team. Take a deep dive into business projects, KPIs, client processes, etc.
Popular meeting platforms you can use:
To create engagement and bonding across the team you can require everyone to have their camera on for the meeting or a portion of it.
Assign clear deliverables.
Establishing clear deliverables allows for no surprises. Using a Project Management tool will empower your team to stay on track of assignments. Tools allow the team to keep project questions in one place.
A clear deliverable includes:
- What needs to happen in this task?
- When does this task need to be completed?
- Where is the information needed to complete this task?
- Who is responsible for completing this task?
- How is this task going to be completed? For example. Is there any additional login info needed?
Popular Project Management Tools:
- Asana
- Trello
- Teamwork PM
Awards and Recognition
Did you know that 69% of team members say that they would work harder if they felt their efforts were being better recognized by their CEO?
Think of creative ways you can recognize the team for their work and project success. Carving out 5 mins on your weekly all team meeting to celebrate project success or a simple thank you email goes a long way.
#truthtalk.
While training is essential this all starts with hiring the right person for the work.
Here’s why Micromanaging doesn’t work all of the time.
Micromanagement is the ultimate controlling management style. It’s demoralizing and counter-intuitive, as the desire for control to make sure everything is in order only creates more problems in the long run..
Honestly… Micromanagement isn’t always a bad thing.
Being on top of your operations and trying to monitor and manage is supportive when teams are still small. The problems come when the company grows and the manager is no longer able to effectively keep up with their deliverables and micromanage.
A CEO who doesn’t allow their team a degree of independence shows lack of trust. The source of this goes back to hiring and you should be asking did you hire the right person for the role?
Micromanagement isn’t scalable.
Think about it – having to spend a large chunk of your day reviewing every detail of what the team is doing, takes time. Scaling up means that you have brought on a team that would grow or take tasks off your plate. Resulting in an increase in time for you to focus on Revenue Generating Activities.
At some point the micromanager themselves can’t keep up with everything, resulting in mistakes due to oversight or burnout.
So how is your virtual team really working?
Let me know in the comments. What will you do to get your virtual team up and running smoothly?