It’s 2022, and much of the world has been in some state of remote or hybrid work for two years, and hybrid will continue to be a pillar for the next generation of work overall.

I want to start with some information that has been widely available for a while. The Powers Resource Center led a survey on virtual teams in 2016 to understand the challenges for newly formed and established virtual teams. This article will provide the first three of six best practices to lead a remote team based on these survey results.

The survey was taken by hundreds of people on virtual teams or leaders of virtual teams. This was well before the pandemic that forced us into new working habits. However, this data remains very accurate as we work with our clients on how their teams move forward. Chart 1 below shows five challenges for newly formed virtual teams as reported from the survey. The challenges ranged; the most prevalent was effectively using technology, the second being setting up a communication plan. 

We have all had a crash course, probably with some newer technology, in the last 18-24 months, and hopefully, you are a lot more comfortable working with them, but still, that was the number one challenge that newly formed teams were having. Behind that, we are somewhere between getting the right resources to support the team or setting behavioral norms for the team and establishing policies and processes. In 2020, the world was caught flat-footed as everyone was sent home to start working in an unfamiliar environment. And frankly, little time was given to figure out these new challenges. Now that we are two years later, I know some teams have done some of these well, but some still struggle with some challenges for new teams. 

Now let’s look at the challenges that were unlocked for established virtual teams in the same research study in Chart 2 below. The orange bar indicates what was on the leaders’ minds as they went through the surveys versus the blue bar, which was on the minds of the team members.

1) Technology So, let us start with technology as your first best practice. The main question is, are you using the technology to your advantage? I would encourage you to do a technology audit to figure out how this works for you and if it is time to change to meet the needs of your team.

Here is a set of questions for you to ask in your technology audit:

• Can I streamline the technology that I am using today?
  
• Am I able to get the information I need on time with the technology I am currently using today?
• How informed and connected is my team based on what I have at my fingertips?
• Is there any place where I have difficulties, and is it challenging to use, or is it difficult to get on and access it in the way I need to for the team?
• Are we able to keep up to date on each other’s progress?
• Is everybody using technology? If not, what is causing them not to use it?
• How is the technology that you are using serving you?

As you are thinking about the inventory of what technology you are using, if it is not meeting the needs of your team, there is no need to keep using it. Survey the team if you are unsure and see if there is something else that you should be putting into place. Another consideration is what additional training the team needs to adopt the technology you need fully.

2) Communication The second best practice is communication. Throughout my career as an Operations and HR leader, communication is always where we can do a bit better. I would encourage you never to underestimate communication, especially when working with people in a remote environment. Think about how often you are reaching out to people and what methods you use to reach out to them. Look at Chart 3 below, which provides some recommendations on risk-based communication methods.

What is the risk to the relationship? If something goes wrong in that communication, many things can be messed up with consequences. What is the chance of misunderstanding? If it is something that has little chance of misunderstanding and it has little risk to the relationship, I would say you can look at less formal communication methods. This is where asking a quick question or giving a brief piece of information via Teams, text, or a short point email can work.

Think about large change initiatives in your organization. For instance, you are moving from one system to a new one or changing your policy around something. Use the chart to determine how you break down the communications based on the stage of your decision.

I encourage you to evaluate what you have been doing. Where have you been? Sometimes it is easy to want to fire off an email quickly because that is the easiest thing to do. You do not have to talk to anybody and can do it quickly. However, picking up the phone may be the best means of communication. Have you been using email in places where you should have been picking up the phone, or are you picking up the phone where you can try a less formal method, and it will save you some time as you move forward? Whatever you do, know that the person working remotely is just as available for communication when you have norms for when and how you communicate.

3) Connection the third best practice is to focus on connection, and this is such a big one. It cannot be underestimated, especially as we know that zoom fatigue and the mental health of our colleagues are authentic challenges. You’ve heard it before, and I will repeat it here. You must be connecting enough with your colleagues, both on business and nonwork topics. Think about when you would go into the office. There they would talk about activities to build the culture. Culture still matters, even more so now than it did pre-pandemic. So yes, not everyone goes in the office, but you want people to be engaged. You want them to feel like this is a great place to work, and you want them to feel like they have all the tools they need to succeed and do their job well.

To do that, you must allow some breathing room to be able to connect socially, and not just on things that are related to the work task at hand. Here are a few ideas on how you work some of these into the virtual environment.

Connection Building Ideas:

• Assign virtual buddies or check-in partners to make sure that the other’s okay, or to check in and see if anybody has questions, sometimes even to check in and see how their day is going and if they need somebody to talk to. We think about that as an age-old excuse that we hear, but it is probably a reality for many people over the last year.
• How are you celebrating things in this virtual world? Make sure that you are taking the time and pausing to allow for those virtual celebrations, whether we are talking about life happenings (someone got married or there was a birth of a child), someone having a milestone anniversary, or an anniversary for that matter. Celebrate those milestones, and make sure you take the time to do it publicly with your teams, such as through virtual, remote luncheons and dinners.
• Send a small happy hour package that includes a small bottle of wine, a glass, and perhaps some snacks, so team members have it on the day they are having that virtual happy hour.
• Plan a remote team-building event. One of my favorites is to do a virtual scavenger hunt. That is a way of icebreakers to get people moving. It breaks up the monotony of the meeting and the day. You can have it be a list of scavenger items they need to get from somebody else over Zoom, or it could just be simple as grabbing these things that are relevant to our workday.

The key is for you to build connections within the team in ways that are genuine and people-centered.

Check back for our next article, where we will share the final 3 of the 6 Best Practices for Leading Your Remote Team.