During these unpreceded times of self-quarantine and social distancing, everyone is now encouraged to work remotely. Leaders must continue to lead their team remotely while keeping their team engaged, motivated and productive.

I want to share some of the best practices I have followed over the years since I have been working with distributed teams for the past 15 years.

Build relationships – Know your team member
An organization is a group of people working toward a common goal. Your organization has people; these people are human beings, guided by their emotions. These people have families and personal lives outside of their 9-5 working hours. As a leader, you ought to know your team members on a personal level. This is crucial to understand what is going on in their respective lives, and as much as they are willing to share. The best way to motivate people is to understand their circumstances, their personal motivation, and their communication style. This is something you ought to be doing as a leader anyway, but with a remote team it becomes even more crucial to help engage with your team better. The remote leader should demonstrate respect and consideration to your team members at all times during virtual communication.

Clear and honest communication
Increasing your communication with your team becomes very important with a remote team. Overly communicating is better than not communicating at all. Use all means of communication such as phone, text, email, video conference and chat communication. You need to understand their preferred communication style of each member of the team and adapt to each member’s preferred communication style. The leader should model and exemplify constant communication with the team with regard to their whereabouts all day. Having a shared calendar and updating it with all your meetings is a great way to make sure your team knows where you are at all times. Encourage your team to make their calendar open and available and keep it updated. Be very transparent and clear in your communication and share your expectations clearly. Remind the team of the deadlines and work expectations. If your team knows the value they are adding and what your expectations from them are, they will always step up to the challenge.

Structure your team meeting
This is a great opportunity to add some structure to your meetings. I suggest that you add structure instead of having unplanned last-minute meetings, as those don’t show leadership quality but instead micromanaging behaviors from the leader.

Below are my suggestions:
– Plan a biweekly meeting with your team, a quick check in for 20 min early in the week like Tuesday morning and later in the week for 40 min for a more in-depth meeting. I am an advocate for a short and concise meeting.

– Plan consistent one on one meetings with your team members weekly and have some office hours available so they can check in with you to increase collaboration. During the meeting, allow everyone to get involved. Some people can be distracted, so you as the leader need to keep them engaged.

– Get away from the boring meeting with deadly PowerPoint slides, make it fun, and provide everyone in the call the opportunity to get engaged and ensure you facilitate the conversation.

Increase collaboration
Leaders use the opportunity of being remote to increase collaboration with their team. You can use a whiteboard session for brainstorming activities and creative projects. You can provide office hours in your calendar so team members can check with you to answer questions to collaborate on their tasks, just like somebody will pop in your office to discuss or update you on an issue. As a leader, you can also use that opportunity to update team members that are less involved to check in with them. This is also an opportunity to create some shared learning activities where the team can come together to watch a webinar and discuss their learning and take aways. This will increase your team’s trust in your leadership. Most importantly, be sure to show an open-door policy.

Consistency in practicing an open-door policy
Your team needs to trust that when they need their leader, they will always be available. You have to keep consistency in everything you model as a leader. Your open-door policy becomes crucial when you are leading a remote team; since there is no face-to-face with your team, the members need to know that when they need you, you are available to answer their questions, concerns, clarify expectations and remove impediments.

Innovate your team dynamic
With a remote workforce, the leader needs to bring some innovation into their team dynamic. You have to get creative in everything you do, your communication style, your collaboration, and your meeting format. I suggest you start your meeting intentionally and sincerely wanting to know about what is going on with your team since everyone lives in different parts of the town, country, and world. What is new in your area, what have you heard that you can share, etc. It is also an opportunity to give time for everyone to speak and engage others in the conversation. Don’t always focus on work because this might be the only human interaction some team members might have the entire day. So, respect everyone’s opinion and opportunity to share what is on their minds. After all, we are all humans, and we have a need to be connected and share our feelings whether these feelings are work-related or not. Give that opportunity to your team and make it fun for them so they can continue to stay engaged and motivated.

In summary, most people that work remotely spend more than 8 hours working, so you need to make sure that they are cared for emotionally so they can focus on being productive instead of worrying about what their boss thinks of them when you micromanage or constantly check on them. Doing so does not show trust on your part to your team. In this difficult time, let’s be real leaders, and act like one by trusting our team members.

My hope is that we all will adopt the best practices to work with distributed teams that can continue even after this coronavirus pandemic is over. On this, I invite everyone to follow the experts’ recommendations (wash your hands, use hand sanitizer, practice social distancing, etc.) during this virus outbreak period. Stay safe, and stay productive.