Being a remote team lead isn’t too different from being an on-site manager in many ways, but there are nuances when guiding a team you don’t physically meet with every day.
A remote team lead must use the right technology to communicate with their colleagues and ensure collaboration that leads to productive workflows.
We’ll explore how you can be a successful remote team lead, whether your workplace is moving to a remote/hybrid setup or it’s an altogether new role for you.
Related: Hybrid Work: Challenges and Solutions
5 Strategies to Be a Great Remote Team Lead
We could discuss hundreds of ways to be a great remote team lead, but that would be overwhelming and probably not very helpful. The key to running a remote team is all about how you facilitate communication and collaboration — here are five excellent ways to do that.
1. Be Approachable With Transparent Communication
Some people thrive living the remote work lifestyle, but many aren’t prepared to go days without interacting with their coworkers. Virtual collaboration is a must, both for intentional informal communication and work-related discussions.
Being a remote team lead consists of creating a system that strikes a balance between supporting your team and holding them accountable for their duties. This means fostering frequent, open communication, maintaining transparency, and ensuring a collaborative work environment.
How can you keep your employees connected as a remote team lead? The solution is simple: Implement a better virtual workspace that makes collaboration fun and easy.
2. Help Your Team Adapt to Remote Work
When teams transition from an in-office environment to a work-from-home one, it’s not uncommon for different people to adapt at different rates. Some of your colleagues may transition fully, especially if you have already established a remote infrastructure. However, for others, this shift to remote work can be extremely disruptive to their work and personal lives.
How much disruption they face is typically tied to workplace culture and the tools you implement. There are various phases to remote adaptation, and how you handle it as a team lead can mean the difference between productive, satisfied workers and disgruntled, confused employees.
You need to implement a collaboration platform to hold meetings and promote social interactions between coworkers. True productivity, however, comes from taking this a step further.
Instead of simply holding remote meetings, record and upload them for people who missed them. Attach a Google Doc or Sheet to every meeting, recording questions and answers so that those who couldn’t attend can reference them later.
In addition, you should have public chat channels available to your team so that everyone can collaborate and communicate with context — something that doesn’t work well with private channels.
Related: Strategies to Maintain Work-Life Balance With Remote Work
3. Make Remote Socialization Easy and Fun
When you can’t have in-person interactions with your coworkers, informal communication matters even more; it enables coworkers to get to know each other and bond over things other than work.
Those who feel more connected at work are more likely to experience satisfaction in their role, perform at a higher level, and feel more invested in the work they do. As a remote team lead, you have to understand this informal communication won’t happen naturally — there’s no passing each other in the hallways or happy hour meetings after work.
That’s why you need to formally address informal communication, despite its name. Design an atmosphere and digital environment where all of your team members feel comfortable reaching out to others about topics other than work.
Remote working naturally leads to mostly work-related discussions between workers. We like to encourage team leads and their team members to spend some time each week having social calls with each other, whether it’s one-on-one conversations or group discussions about a common interest.
4. Manage Feelings of Isolation and Burnout
Remote work isn’t the same for everyone; your team may face challenges, like feeling isolated, left out, or overworked. While these feelings can pop up in any work environment, they’re much more common in remote workplaces.
Loneliness isn’t uncommon, especially for team members transitioning from working in a traditional office setting. Informal communications and spending time on immersive digital platforms can help ease these feelings.
As a remote team lead, you must create ways to help your team stay connected from anywhere and encourage them to take advantage of those systems. Asynchronous communication is key.
In addition, managing your personal and work life when working remotely isn’t easy, so team leads need to model and encourage boundaries. One way to do this is to focus more on results than hours worked, building a sense of trust in your organization and helping to prevent burnout by not setting rigid rules regarding hours.
Remote work means your employees must manage their time, stay organized, and motivate themselves. Encourage team members to communicate with you when they feel burnt out or overworked.
5. Implement Better Onboarding Processes
Your remote onboarding process sets up a new recruit for success — or failure. The thoroughness of the onboarding experience is linked to better long-term outcomes.
We know there’s always plenty of work to be done, and as a remote team leader, it’s your job to ensure your new hire can focus on onboarding and getting used to the tools you use before handing them a stack of tasks to complete.
If you don’t prioritize onboarding and focus instead of eliminating your workload in the short term, you can’t expect your employees to be efficient and productive in the long term.
Related: Create An Effective Virtual Onboarding Experience
Keep Remote Teams Engaged and Connected to Improve Productivity
The solution to keeping your remote team connected is maintaining transparency and open communication. It’s not easy, but with the right tech stack, you can create a better remote environment for you, your employees, and your organization.
Love them or hate them, video chats are here to stay for remote teams. However, this doesn’t mean your communication process has to entail stressful, complicated Zoom calls.
There’s another solution: Give your team a way to co-locate virtually with 3D collaboration software.
At The Qube, we give remote team leaders a way to keep their teams connected and engaged in an immersive, customized, and branded virtual space. It’s the closest remote teams can get to an in-person environment, eliminating feelings of isolation and burnout that are so common in traditional remote organizations.
Our platform is secure and scalable, with interactive 3D spaces for your teams to collaborate in, whether it’s for an after-work chat or a better meeting experience.
Want to see the difference that better remote collaboration can make for you and your team? Schedule your free demo of our software and check implementing better communication processes off of your checklist.
