How to Grow and Manage a Remote Team
I’ve been working exclusively remote for more than 7 years. For me, it lets me live the life I want, hiking and drawing in the mornings and working a shifted schedule with the US (I’m 7 hours ahead of New York). I’ve worked as a consultant, and grown and managed distributed design and product teams. In this article, I won’t go into why a remote office environment is the future of work, and all the benefits and impact to companies and employees. For this article, I’ll share some of my tips for growing and managing a remote team.
Recruiting
Classical recruiting is fine — posting a job on your site and working with a recruiting firm will get you candidates. The problem with posting a job for a remote position is you’ll get hundreds, if not thousands of applicants. It’s very hard to sort through all those, putting a heavy burden on a remote company’s recruiting team.
I mentor at the online design bootcamp DesignLab. That’s given me access to great up-and-coming designers, and I’ve been able to coach and mentor them on their journey. Twice, I’ve hired new grads I previously mentored. They’ve been amazing!
Since you’re a remote company, you have access to Slack, Facebook and Twitter to scout for talent. I keep track of the young talent there, and when I post jobs to my networks there, I get a great stream of quality candidates.
Setting Expectations
For a remote job, your team absolutely needs to know your expectations and objectives. This is true of a co-located job, too. Because you’re all scattered across the world, it’s important to set the expectations and objectives in video meetings, so you can read body language and facial cues, but then you need to transfer those objectives to a tool everybody has access to. That could be something straightforward like a shared Google Sheet, Trello, Asana, or whatever project management your team uses.
Tool mandates
There are lots of tools out there for remote work! Slack, Asana, Jira, Basecamp, Zoom and Hangout… Your company should all be using a standard set of tools to collaborate and communicate. If you’re in slack, and someone else is in email, it’s like being in the same building but on different floors. In the real world, you have the benefit of walking into the same room as someone else, so in a remote team, you need to be in the same tools.
(Check out Chris Herd’s First Base for remote software provisioning: https://www.firstbasehq.com )
The mandate for which tools to use should be enforced by leadership. And in the hiring process, it should be clear that candidates are comfortable using the tools you use.
I worked in a team where one member preferred phone calls. He was a bit old school. He started using Slack more, but it was clear he didn’t live in Slack for communication like the rest of us, so it sometimes felt like he wasn’t part of the team. This creates a fragmented culture.
The right tool for the job
Sometimes your company starts with one tool (let’s say Asana), and people discover another tool which might be better for their team (maybe Jira, for developers).
This is tricky.
I’m in favor of having as few tools as possible for the whole company to be on. If everyone’s on the same tools, it creates a more connected culture, and allows everybody to be in the loop on what’s going on company-wide. That’s important for company culture. Unless there’s a really strong, compelling reason to jump ship on a tool, I would favor using the tool that everybody uses, instead of using the perfect tool for a specific team.
As Nick Francis, CEO of HelpScout says, “A culture’s effectiveness revolves around how information flows. Everyone needs to feel like they have access to the same information.”
One-on-Ones
It’s important for you, as the team leader, to have weekly 1:1s with each member of your team. Turn on the video, so you can see each other. Let your direct report see your face and read your body language. Have your video on, first, to set the tone. Encourage your direct report to have her video on, too.
In a remote environment, direct reports might be communicating very well on projects and tasks with the rest of the team — and even with you, as their manager. But there can be a tendency for people to start to feel isolated.
One-on-ones are a place for them to discuss things that might not be directly related to a project, to bring up an issue, and make a personal connection. Seeing each other on video will help bridge the gap and help everybody feel connected by letting you all read each other’s non-verbal cues. Show that you’re giving your undivided attention.
One-on-ones are also a place to discuss performance, upcoming objectives, expectations, and more personal matters. Do not cancel these — they are probably the most important meetings you’ll have with your direct reports.
For each 1:1 and standing meeting, I have a google doc where anybody on the team can add agenda items. It’s linked in the repeating event description and allows you to look back and see what’s been discussed. This is also useful in peer review and leveling conversations.
Slack dailies
In a distributed workforce, dailies can be hard to schedule since everybody is on a different schedule. I like using a dedicated daily channel in Slack for everybody to post their updates. People can write a threaded reply to specific dailies if there’s a question on something.
Having the daily in a channel in Slack saves the half hour and scheduling issues, and works just as well.
Leveling
It’s important for you to be clear with your team where they stand now, and where you’d like them to be. They should know what they’re working towards, for the company, and personally in their career. Make sure in your weekly one-on-ones, quarterly reviews, and annually, that you review with your DRs their progress on leveling.
Keep track on your own in Evernote, Sheets, or wherever you choose while work is ongoing and during one-on-ones to make sure you’re really tracking progress. Don’t wait for quarterly or annual reviews to try and remember where your direct reports are are holding.
Time Tracking
If you’re doing proper dailies and one-on-ones, you don’t need time tracking. You should already know what your team is working on. Time tracking is a crutch for agencies and out of touch management. It’s better to report on your team’s output rather than time usage.
Collaborating
Use tools that enhance collaboration and remove communication lag. You want to remove as much friction from communication as possible. I use Figma, Google Docs, Asana and Slack, because if we’re in a meeting together, we can make and see changes happening live, while we watch. That makes the communication happen in real time.
Working hours
Set and respect working hours. If you work in a team that spans many time zones, it could be helpful to set certain times and days of the week where everybody agrees there’s a certain amount of overlap. That allows everybody the ability to communicate, and provides a level of confidence that the communication will happen. Slack and email is great, but you still need live communication.
At the same time, if somebody is out at certain hours, try to respect those hours and only meet during the committed overlap times. There is no reason you need more than a couple hours of overlap to schedule meetings.
Feedback
Try to give feedback via video, as much as possible! If somebody is having a bad day, even the most innocuous feedback could sound angry in their head when they read it. You never know what “tone” your feedback will be perceived!
Also, make sure all negative feedback comes with genuine positive feedback. Positive feedback could, and should be shared publicly in your company’s communication tools. Set goals for yourself as a leader on how frequently you give public praise to members of your team.
Praise
I am putting this separate from “feedback” because praise should not be directed (only) at the praised. You need to praise your team and individuals in public, privately to leadership, and to other teams. This should happen in a co-located company, too, but in a remote environment, it’s even easier for quiet introverts to go unnoticed and slip under the radar.
In a remote environment, it’s easy for people to feel lonely or isolated. Public praise in front of the company on main Slack channels, email announcements, or intranet is a great way to make members of your team feel valued and appreciated.
Don’t let praise only go to the loud visible extroverts! Proactively stick up for the introverts, too. This should be easy if you’re in touch with progress and communicate frequently. And with your one-on-ones and daily logs, you have all the notes you need.
Working with Leadership
Leadership needs to know what your team is up to, of course. They’re also usually very busy and don’t want too much detail. Aside from giving the summary view of project progress and successes, make a point of mentioning your direct reports by name, and what they’ve accomplished.
Again, it’s easy for the quiet introverts to slip under the radar. And even the folks who are visible on slack may not be communicating in the slack channels the C-suite lives in. Don’t take for granted that leadership knows your team. It’s your job as the manager to make sure everybody on your team gets recognized for their work.
For personnel issues, I only ever bring people up by name when it requires formal intervention. If I think somebody might need to be on a performance improvement plan, or isn’t working out on the team, it needs to be formally logged. I’ll usually mention it briefly to leadership and inform them I’ll send them more information via email — email will be a good place to have a record and timestamp of the interaction.
Firing Somebody
This is never easy. And doing this in a remote environment can feel really cold and unkind. Give yourself a solid block of time for this meeting and make sure it’s with video on for both parties. Don’t force it to be rushed into 15 minutes. Schedule an hour to do this. For me, I always felt really bad after I had to let people go and needed some time to recover for my next meeting. Look at the camera, be sincere, and let the person know you’re willing to accept any feedback. Let them vent if need be.
If you feel you need to record the meeting, let them know ahead of time the meeting is being recorded. It might put them on guard if they know somebody else might see the recording, but it makes sense if you’re worried about backlash.
But I never actually recorded one of these meetings. There was only one time I was worried I might need backup in a particularly difficult situation, so someone on HR was invited to the meeting, as well.
Peer review
Chase Adams has great advice on preparing feedback for peers and direct reports.
The tl;dr of Chase’s tip is to have a running log of each person you work with, and enter notes during each interaction. I started using Evernote for this task, which I always have open on 1 monitor, and log feedback and notes every time I speak with someone.
IRL
Remote working let’s you live the life you want and work in a state of freedom where you control your own time management and work environment. It requires discipline, but that discipline is empowering. I don’t think we need to be in an office every day with coworkers to be productive and successful.
That said, regular meetups IRL (in real life) help foster better relationships with your coworkers. Annual or semi-annual is good to keep people connected. Make sure these meetups include big working sessions so you can get a feel for the team all working together in the same room, but also include some sort of fun activity.
Make sure the team building activity is appropriate and inclusive for everybody. The goal is to get everybody to feel comfortable and have some fun, but also let people open up a bit. Some team activities I’ve done include:
- Trapeze
- Off-road ATVing
- Axe throwing
- Cooking competition
- Scavenger hunt
It’s not easy growing and managing a team in any environment. In a remote workplace, it requires even more intention and discipline to make sure everybody feels valued and that the you’re all aligned and happy.
