Management

Top 9 Best Tips for Distributed Teams Management

Managing remote teams is a challenge for any business, however, it’s a strategy used more often now as skills improve in nations where the cost of living is less. Companies are always seeking ways to gain more market share. What can inhibit growth is the expense of staff so hiring workers that can work remotely from the company’s main operating centers, is a strategy that’s work the effort.

Do you remember when working from home a day or two a week first came in? Initially, there were trust issues, i.e. are workers productive when they work from home? The challenge with allowing staff to ‘hot desk’ and work remotely was how the company could track their productivity.

When staff are in the office, they are visible, however, when they’re working from home before ‘monitoring apps’ they are not visible. Now monitoring is possible the challenge that remains is how to coordinate projects with team members located in different countries, with varying time zones.

In this article, there are a few tips on how to work with distributed teams to deliver what customers require, but for less outlay.

Table of Contents

1. Live Meeting

For long-term projects with a fairly young team, try to organize an initial live meeting. Even with today’s technology, there is no better way to build a strong team than spending a few days together. And although at first, it may seem overly expensive, for high-priority projects this will be an investment that will have a high return in the long run.

2. Organize the Workflow

As a team leader or project manager, pay particular attention to the direct organization of team meetings and project management. The topics discussed, role distribution, project plans and documentation are of particular importance when managing a distributed team. It should be noted that for a one-hour telephone conference, it is still necessary to spend several hours on administrative preparation.

3. Time Difference

If you are in the United States, do not expect your project colleagues who are working remotely from another part of the globe to have a conference with you. Unfortunately, there’s not always a perfect time in the international team that would be convenient for everyone. Therefore, you will have to adapt to each other in turn. Again, due to the time difference, you might want to try to ensure that your calls are not longer than one hour.

4. Don’t Forget About Team Building

Spend a lot of time “offline” with individual team members. Make face-to-face meetings with each team member for training, feedback, motivation and building relationships.

5. Stay Connected

Take some formal and informal teamwork after your initial meeting. Acquaintance with someone as a person, and not just as a resource, allows you to build relationships based on trust, cooperation, and loyalty. Thus, it wouldn’t hurt to connect on social media, etc.

6. Cultural Differences

Learn another culture – learn a few phrases, at least how to say and write “hello” and “thank you”. You do not have to fluently speak a foreign language, your colleagues and partners will appreciate the respect you have shown. But it’s worth being careful, some project managers sometimes overdo it and then lose credibility in the eyes of their project teammates.

7. Use Technology, But Use Appropriately

Web conferencing, chats, blogs and video conferencing can be useful and can be used by you to achieve your plan. The only thing is, do not get carried away with these tools, use them appropriately.

8. Use Classic English

Although English is an international language, avoid local dialects, metaphors and anything else that can be confusing. This can be difficult right away – ask your teammates for advice.

9. Provide Information in Advance

Team members in another country may want to translate the material to you send or at least have time to read it in advance. It is very difficult to read and understand non-trivial information in a non-native language.