Remote Team Management: concrete practices for distributed teams

Adapt your working methods to manage remotely as you would at the office

Managing remotely is possible as long as you have the right methods, and adopt the right team habits from the start. For many of the teams who work today in geographically distributed locations, sometimes even in different time zones, maintaining a good cohesion while working remotely is a daily challenge. This is what ultimately promotes smooth communication and efficient working together.

As a manager of a team working remotely, here are the 7 objectives to achieve in order to work as efficiently, or even more efficiently remotely than you would if you were in the same room:

• Maintain a good connection within your team
• Ensure project success with proven methods
• Maintain a relationship of trust
• Effectively transmit information between the different areas of expertise
• Motivate teams on a daily basis
• Challenge the status quo and continuously improve
• Constantly stimulate the creativity of your team

Step by step, we give you all the keys to develop each of these points, with the help of ready-to-use Templates inspired by methods that are well-known for their results.

Adapt your team rituals to remote work

First thing: how to maintain a good connection within the team? By adopting team rituals using, for example, the GoodMorning Meeting Template, for a daily synchronization meeting, or weekly one with the Weekly Template.

The objective here is to set up a regular exchange of information, which allows to keep a good coordination and a strong cohesion within the team, even at a distance. Everyone can share their key information:

• Success stories
• Project progress
• Performance indicators,...

This way, the whole team can synchronize its actions and move forward together more easily.

Use simple and verified tools to manage your projects efficiently

How to guarantee the success of your projects when your team is not physically together?

By using methods that allow you to visualize in one place, and even remotely, the progress of each person.

For example, thanks to methods like Kanban, the team can easily monitor the progress of tasks and visualize their workload.

Thanks to the Steering Committee Template, you can hold regular steering committee meetings, as if you were in the office, by sharing a whiteboard that allows you to lead the different parts of the meeting: discussion, decision-making, information sharing, etc.

Make sure to have high-quality team discussions

Another essential thing when it comes to management: a relationship of trust! Well, even at a distance, it continues to be built. Each member of your team must feel listened to, valued, and free to express themselves whenever they feels the need.

Whatever the format of the interaction, there are appropriate methods to allow the whole team to get involved and share their ideas.

With the One-on-One Template or the Annual Performance Template, you keep on having qualitative and personalized exchanges with each team member.

With the Onboarding Path Template, you can welcome a new employee even remotely, and offer them a fun and customized course.

Focus on information spreading

When teleworking, it is difficult to be aware of what is going on just by dropping by your colleague's office.

So, get into the habit of securing the proper transmission of information between you and your team, thanks to a Klaxoon Memo.

A Memo (formerly Capsule) comes in the form of a recap where you can record key figures or facts to remember, images, quizzes and many other resources. All you have to do is share it with your team, who can consult it as soon as they have the opportunity, in an asynchronous way.

In this model, we propose you to discover the Minute Help Memo, a very short format to be implemented on a daily basis by sharing them in your working Boards.

Propose time slots for collective emulation

To set a pace in your remote working weeks and reinforce the team's motivation, set up challenges around your professional objectives, or anything else!

The Team Challenge Template is the ideal environment to follow your progress in the achievement of your challenges. Focus on a key performance indicator (KPI), then set up a game theme to unite your team. This is exactly what Guillaume Creach did for his teams at Krys stores, when he launched a Team Challenge on the theme of the famous American basketball teams.

Continuously find ways to improve

Regularly, take a step back on your past actions and your completed projects, in order to identify what worked well and highlight improvements to be made.

To do this, the Retrospective Template will help you structure these moments, both in remote work and in person. Visually, share with your team your ideas about what to do more, less, or start, continue or stop doing.

Maintain a dynamic of innovation

Finally, the ultimate key to successful teamwork is to continuously mobilize collective intelligence. And for that, there is nothing like brainstorming sessions that energize everyone's creativity!

For example, you can use de Bono's Six Thinking Hats method to adopt different approaches to the same subject by juggling roles. Try also the World Café Template to conduct an efficient session remotely in several sub-groups.