Some organizations had been deploying “Remote jobs” or “Work From Home (WFH)” long before the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, those organizations were quite adoptive as nothing really changed – Except the lockdown. Pinnacle was one of those organizations, starting its establishment, pinnacle invested in the right technology with Microsoft and built its IT infrastructure as an ultra-modern organization that is managed remotely depending on its technology infrastructure platform to manage its people around 3 contents at that time.
I have been training, & coaching leaders that work is not a place anymore almost a decade before Corona time, and what I found is that technology by itself cannot do the job, Technology is part, but the most important element is the leadership. Knowing how to manage teams remotely and thus train the people in the organization on how to effectively lead teams remotely.
“Stay in touch, communicate well, and don’t let anything burn” is a motto that sums up the task of the virtual team leader quite well. The spatial separation makes it necessary to pay much more attention to the three points mentioned.
Communication in a virtual team may be a little more explicit and detailed. Insinuations and concerns that are hidden “between the lines” often don’t come across as they are meant, and the team leader lacks the direct feedback channel to verify it.
Not only in remote teams – but specifically here – clear communication is absolutely critical for the success of the team.
The clearer you communicate, the more you limit the room for interpretation and the higher the chance that your counterpart understands what you want and can then take the actions you expect.
This saves you a lot of time that you would otherwise need to readjust, i.e. to correct the employee again and again, which leads to frustration on both sides.
How often in my consulting career have I experienced it when I was present at meetings that the manager did not communicate clearly to everyone what expectations he or she has of the individual team members.
When I then asked both the manager and the employees after the meeting, it seemed as if they were not in the same meeting. Most of the content communicated by the manager and the content perceived by the employees were not identical. This is absolutely terrifying.
And in order to avoid exactly that, we will deal with how to make your meetings more efficient and thus significantly increase the performance of your team in the training and coaching sessions we offer.
Your meetings have to be more inspiring (more inspiration than only information) and your team will be more engaged and actively participating. They have to understand exactly what your goals and expectations are, how they will achieve them and why? This will absolutely boost your performance.
You have to recognize when a team member is not aligned so that you can immediately intervene positively before other team members are infected and team performance is negatively affected.
All information necessary for a project should be freely accessible to all, preferably from the moment it is created. This has two advantages: Firstly, it allows inconsistencies and errors to be identified early enough to be ironed out. Secondly, this approach offers practical advantages for everyone. If each person conscientiously discharges his or her fetch debt with the information, everyone has the opportunity to discharge their fetch debt (to be informed) more easily. A central information repository, as offered by project management and collaboration tools, is clearly preferable to endless e-mail threads.
Fixing of schedules, scheduling of meetings, clarification of goals and responsibilities, determination of usual decision structures, target response time, visibility of individually assigned work orders and their processing status, milestone overview, feedback rounds (collective as well as individual), expected leadership tasks and participation rights as well as obligations, necessary use of technology, intended ways of conflict articulation and conflict regulation, group result saturated with individual results as (incentive) basis and more..
Leading virtual teams is not an option anymore, someone in your team will be working remotely or from home, and your team may be overseas or in another country. You have to prepare your organization not only from a technology and process perspective but also from your leaders’ mindset.
Pinnacle has a set of consultation programs, training, and services to help your organization manage the change that is happening in today’s workplace, and effectively lead remote teams.
Pinnacle® is a multi-country consultancy firm. Our consultants are spread around the world. We have built our organization on a modern business model with agility, diversity, and resilience to the business dynamics. We have chosen our technology platform to support our modern mindset thus we work from anywhere …. As work is not a place anymore. We implement Lean Six Sigma in everything we do whether internally or externally at our client sites.
Article is written by:
Roland Friedl,
Senior Trainer & Coach
Pinnacle Country Representative DACH Region
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