Topic Tuesday - Greetings from India

[Mark Livingstone (San Diego)]

Hi all.

Tuesday again (well, Wednesday for me) and I just arrived in India for a week long work trip.

I've been here many times and quite a long journey, but always like meeting the team out here and building relationships.

So questions for today....how do you best build relationships with your remote teams?

Any great tips or tricks?

[Stephanie Grice]

Hey Mark! Thanks for bringing this topic up. I'm not based in San Diego but saw this thread and it's very relevant to me nonetheless :) My core team is distributed across Portland, SF/the East Bay, and New York, with additional members of the extended team in Austin and Amsterdam. 

One thing we have had positive outcomes with is with regards to team meetings. If someone is remote (which is the case in 100% of our meetings), then everyone dials in individually, even if there are team members on the call in the same office. Having each team member dial in individually evens the playing field, so to speak, and helps everyone have the same experience on the call. We found that having a room full of people with one or two people dialing in made it really hard for the remote members to participate in meetings.

Curious to hear what others have tried! 

[Mark Livingstone (San Diego)]

Thanks, Stephanie.

That's a great idea and a good thing to consider.

Do you see any more phone quality issues when using all the individual lines vs. a central one for team members that are located in the same area?

[Erica Moss]

@Mark Livingstone (San Diego) Such a great topic, Mark! I find that the Trello blog has a ton of great resources as it relates to remote teams. A few of my favorites:

https://blog.trello.com/remote-work-team-success-guide

https://blog.trello.com/tips-for-managing-a-remote-team

https://blog.trello.com/6-mistakes-when-you-work-in-office-but-have-remote-team-members

[Mark Livingstone (San Diego)]

Thanks for sharing @Erica Moss!