Remote work has become popular within many industries as observed through my days searching LinkedIn, and it appears more businesses are adopting this work model to improve their operations and attract diverse talent. And though it is still unclear if this model is here to stay – I’ve been putting thought into how to effectively lead and be part of teams in the current remote/hybrid environment.
Leading or being part of a team in today’s “virtual team” reality present challenges that require unique and often bespoke and novel solutions; we can’t rely on an old Harvard Business Review articles to light the way to overcome these problems. In my experience, I’ve come to understand creating the right team culture is critical to leading teams successfully; and to do so my experience has lead me to embrace the, what now may be trite, advice of doing things such as: prioritizing team mental health, creating a culture of trust, and doing one’s best to foster informal interactions, encourage autonomy, and embrace diversity and inclusion to reduce the challenges of remote/hybrid work. These steps can and should be taken both as a team lead and a team member in order to create a unified team culture.
Below I’ll break down these steps a bit further to give an idea of what this looks like in practice:
Prioritizing mental health: Team leads and team members can help themselves and others “prioritize mental health” through speaking openly about the challenges they are facing in working remotely and offering support to team members who may be struggling. This can be something as simple as offering an ear to listen, or by encouraging taking more or longer breaks, and don’t forget about promoting the use of mental health resources if your company makes them available. These may seem like small steps – but they can have a huge impact.
Building trust: Team leaders can begin to build trust through extreme transparency and honesty – about goals, expectations, and what they do and don’t know – being the model of transparency in all situations will help everyone to model the same behavior and begin building team trust. Leaders, and team mates can also provide regular feedback, and recognize and reward team members for their contributions. These small positive affirmations go a long way toward building trust.
Encourage informal interactions: Team mates and leaders can foster informal interactions like organizing virtual coffee chats, happy hours, or team building activities that allow team members to connect on a more personal level. There are also opportunities for everyone to be proactive in reaching out to colleagues to engage in conversations that are not centered around work. Engaging people in this manner creates a stronger sense of team – and provide a window into people’s lives not normally available during work hours. I highly suggest participating in such activities to solidify one’s position in a remote/hybrid team.
Encourage autonomy: Being a fan of the “Extreme Ownership” approach – I’d encourage team leads help build autonomy through providing clear goals, responsibilities, ownership assignments and deadlines, and having team members to work in a way that best suits their work style. Team members can aid in the creation of team/ their own autonomy by communicating their needs and preferences to their leadership and taking direct ownership of their work. This is a fairly critical area to focus on if a team wants remote work to succeed – feeling like you are being micromanaged from afar is a sure fire way to crush team autonomy and spirit and reduce the effectiveness of a remote work setup.
Embrace diversity and inclusion: Finally leaders and team members can embrace diversity and inclusion by being open to different perspectives and ideas, and creating a team culture that values and respects differences. Often this requires a team that feels comfortable sharing within their team, and can be one of the last pieces of team culture to develop – but with proper focus on the steps/focuses before this one, and aided by providing resources for team members to learn and grow in this area, such as training sessions or workshops – an open and diverse team culture can be developed.
By taking these steps, team leads and team members can prioritize team mental health, build a culture of trust, foster informal interactions, encourage autonomy, and embrace diversity and inclusion in a remote/hybrid work environment. These steps are by all means not the only way to achieve this end goal, but it’s the outline of steps I’ve used to lead and create effective teams.
In conclusion, leading teams successfully in a remote/hybrid work environment starts with creating the “right” team culture to enable success, and I’ve find it is through the prioritization of team mental health, building a culture of trust, fostering informal interactions, encouraging autonomy, and embracing diversity and inclusion which will enable team members to work more effectively and collaboratively, regardless of their physical location and ultimately allow for successful team leadership.
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