12 Essential Tips for How To Work Effectively With a Remote Team

Susan Weinschenk, Ph.D., Guest author

Do you work with team members in remote locations? I do. Whether it is people scattered around one continent, like the Americas, or a truly global team with people from America, Europe, and Asia, these days a lot of my time is spent working on the phone, with email, Skype, and various collaboration tools, to communicate with members of a remote team.

Remote teams are challenging – If you work with remote teams then you are familiar with the challenges. You may have to deal with time zone differences, less than optimal phone connections, language or accent barriers. Here are some techniques I’ve used over the years to help remote teams bond quickly and work together well:

1. Challenge the remote concept – OK, maybe this is cheating, but I decided that the first tip I would start with would be to make sure it is necessary that the team work remotely, or at least question whether all the work or all the team has to be remote. When I am putting together a remote team for a project I try to see if one or more of the team members can first meet in person for a few days or weeks, and then separate and do the rest of the work remotely. This is especially important if the team members have never worked together before.

2. Use photos and bios to introduce the team – If this is a team that has not worked together before and/or if some or all of the team members have not even met each other remotely, much less in person, then it is worth it to spend some time and energy with introductions. Have all the team members put together a short “bio” with a photo about themselves and describing appropriate background and experience, as well as a few personal details about hobbies, or family. These don’t have to be long or extensive – a one page description is all you need. To encourage this, make up a template or example and send it out to the team and ask them to create one for themselves. Once everyone has a bio then they will only need to tweak it for the next team they are assigned to. Post the collection of bios up at a google doc or some other collaboration tool to share.

3. Use photos with your collaboration tools – If you are using chat, or skype, Go To Meeting, or some other collaboration tool, ask team members to upload photos so that each time you collaborate with them you see their faces.

4. Use video chat – There are many tools out there that let you talk with video. Oovoo is a tool you can use for free and have multiple people with video on the call. Many people have cameras already in their computers, but if you don’t, an inexpensive webcam is under $15! That’s definitely worth it to have some calls via video. Being able to see people’s expressions means the interactions are very different than with voice alone.

5. Pay attention to communication quality – make sure you have good voice connections. It is tiring to have to try to hear what someone is saying over static, a poor line, or when calls get continually dropped.

6. Spread the “pain” of time zone – rather than always meeting at 8 am eastern, or 10 am Pacific, or 11 am India time, try moving the time zones around periodically so that one part of the team is not having to always work late or start very early.

7. Keep time zone clocks – use online or physical time zone clocks so that you are sure what time it is for various team members. Remember that when times change (as in daylight savings time) people in other parts of the world may not be aware.

8. Keep a team calendar for holidays – every culture and country has their own holidays. Keep a calendar that shows all the holidays for all the team members to avoid last minute frustrations.

9. Make time for phone or video calls – don’t fall into the trap or habit of doing all of your communications via email because it’s “easier”. You need to talk by phone or video chat periodically or the relationship will go down hill quickly.

10. Be sensitive to cultural and language issues – if you are working with people in other countries and cultures take some time to learn about their language and culture. Watch out for using phrases that only someone from your culture or country would understand. If you tend to say things like, “That’s a tempest in a teapot” realize that not everyone will understand what that means (well, not everyone in your own culture will understand that one!).

11. Build more time into your project plan – It takes longer to work remotely. Make sure you leave more time in your project plan for extra phone calls and extra iterations of project deliverables.

12. Be patient – Try to be patient with the process. Working with remote teams can be a challenge, but it can also be rewarding. Be patient with yourself and with the other team members. It gets easier over time.

What do you think? Do you have more tips and techniques to share? What have been your biggest challenges?

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Susan is a guest author at saneworklife.com. If you find this article interesting or helpful, you may want to check out Dr. Weinschenk’s popular blog: What Makes Them Click: www.whatmakesthemclick.net