How do you manage your remote teams?

[Pawan Kumar]

How do you manage to have that long-distance relationship with your employees?

Long-distance relationships are not easy.

As a team manager or team member what problems you have to face to manage or connect a Remote Team.

[Kat Warner · Accepted solution]

For me it is important to build and maintain a relationship on a daily/regular basis regardless of where you and your teams are located. Otherwise any time you say "we need to talk" it feels like being summoned to the Principal's office.

A range of off topic channels in your preferred instant messenger tool (Slack, Skype, Teams, Yammer, etc) can help with this along with make the effort and making time for chit-chat. Doing this gives you opportunities to notice changes in your team's attention levels, motivations, and health without them having to explicitly ask for help and support. 

Another tip is to ask team members periodically whether the time of existing regular meetings suits them, and if not, why not. Recently we moved out daily stand-up from 10.30 am to 9.15 am to better suit how people were working from home. When we return to working in the office we will likely go back to the later time as we make allowances to team member's morning commutes.