Key Points

• Multiple organizations are turning to remote work even in the post-pandemic environment.
• Developing effective remote teams requires coordination, communication, and accountability.
• High-performing remote teams can be more effective than an in-person team.

How does an organization build a high-performing remote team? Remote work has become all the rage over the last few years, with organizations without a heavy need for on-site personnel switching to the model. The benefits have been discussed ad nauseam, like the lower rent for many organizations and reduced overhead.

However, little has been said about how to lead a group remotely. While the work is still being accomplished in a virtual space, how do you guarantee it is done to the best possible standards? Today, we’re looking at how you would best answer this question and the steps you can take to ensure a high-performing remote team for your organization going into the new year.

Taking a Look at Remote Work

Before we delve into high-performing remote teams, it’s worth highlighting and defining their workflows. Remote work isn’t a recent trend by any means, but one that has gained a fair amount of prominence over the last five or so years. Some industries simply don’t require talent to be on-site to get the work done.

When you think about it, it becomes a natural boon for some industries. Why maintain a physical presence if you’re shipping digital deliverables? That said, remote work does bring its inherent advantages and disadvantages to the fore. The lower overhead and operational costs are a net benefit for any organization.

However, remote work loses a bit of the human element. When taking workflows into a virtual space, you’re losing some of what makes for an effective team. That isn’t to say you’ll have less effective workers. You will need to put in some solid legwork to make up for the pitfalls, just like any other approach.

Why Organizations Are Turning to Remote and Hybrid Worfklows

Remote teams are becoming a dominant force in the modern workplace. This is especially prevalent when looking at digital services and certain departments run by larger organizations. While you might see the brick-and-mortar locations for the likes of somewhere like Target or Toyota, they’re likely offloading at least one department to a remote or hybridized workflow.

This has the benefit of keeping certain operational costs low while maximizing manpower effectiveness. Many organizations struggle with sticking the landing but tough it out. This doesn’t have to be the case though, as some organizations like Uber have highlighted just how effective having internal infrastructure off-site can be.

Simply put, a remote team is the way of the modern era. If you’ve got the means to implement this in your current organization, you might as well do so. Many top brands are pivoting to hybrid and remote workflows and seeing massive returns as a result. Ignoring this wave of the future could have potential hazards for any organization.

Building a High-Performing Remote Team

Now that we’ve outlined a few of the highlights and benefits of remote work, it’s time to discuss how you build an effective team. Developing high-performing remote teams can seem daunting at first glance. You don’t have the same set of controls or means to lead your team effectively. However, much like remote work is an adjustment for the worker, it is an adjustment for leadership as well.

As you approach building a high-performing remote team, there are certain ideas you should keep in the back of your mind. You cannot approach your team with the same sets of controls you’d have with in-person staff. Standup meetings can certainly be conducted, but the physical nature of an in-person location isn’t going to be present.

As such, shift your mental set to think remotely. You’ll see better returns on your efforts, and you’ll start maximizing the efficacy of your team when it comes time to put the rubber on the road. For leadership that has been ingrained in the in-person mentality, there is going to be a teething period. However, with time, you’ll see that a high-performing remote team is more than possible.

Overcoming the Distance

When setting out to build a high-performing remote team distance is the primary concern. An office negates most of this but put that out of your mind. So, how do you subtract the distance when building a team? Well, that will entirely depend on how you choose to conduct your remote work. There are a few different ways where you can get your team on the same page.

Depending on the type of work your organization does, you might benefit from using the like of job boards. Tools like Asana and Trello make for a fast and effective means of delegating tasks. Properly implemented, tools like this can readily keep your team on track, with clear and defined goals in place.

However, I’ll emphasize that communication is key. I don’t mean the occasional email, but a few separate pipelines. Emails can get lost in the shuffle, but having the right sort of communication infrastructure, scheduled virtual meetings and organizational tools to accommodate workflow are going to make the distance a minimal concern.

Contextualize Your Goals and Directives

I touched on job boards in the previous point, but they’re part of a much larger concept. Putting your goals, milestones, and directives into context goes a long way to adding a bit of concrete substance to your high-performing remote team. When just looking at text on a screen, that can be freely interpreted by some workers.

However, any team leader has to provide context for any goals that arise. You’ll want to forge relationships, develop rapport, and show the stakes of the work you’re doing for your organization. This can make or break a high-performing remote team.

Remote work can take away from clearly defined roles at any organization. That isn’t the fault of the worker or leadership, that’s just the nature of adding distance to the mix. However, a sure hand and context are going to develop your remote team into a performant unit.

Keep the Team Accountable

This goes hand-in-hand with the notion of context. Keeping your team accountable is going to be the difference between losing the proverbial plot and developing a high-performing remote team. At the end of the day, you need to make accountability front and center when considering any member of your team.

At the start of each shift, this is where leadership is paramount. Workers should know what they are responsible for and be held to task. This is one area where we’ve seen remote work falter, even with the largest organizations. You’re likely used to deadlines and milestones in a physical context.

This same workflow is readily applied to remote work and should be. Low-performing team members should also be held to task for their deficiencies when considering the work done on any project. A project should be performed by a well-oiled machine of a team, and keeping each member accountable for their actions, output, and performance is going to make a considerable difference.

Leverage Digital Tools

I mentioned a few tools earlier, like Asana and Trello. However, the modern era has seen a plethora of virtual tools designed to make the distances seen in virtual workplaces null and void. You should be leveraging something like Slack for daily communications. Daily standup meetings can readily be conducted with the likes of something like Citrix, Zoom, or Microsoft Teams.

If you can think of a scenario, there is likely a software tool available for it. We’ve highlighted numerous digital tools in the past like mind-mapping software, data analysis tools, and so forth. The same applies to developing a high-performing remote team.

At the end of the day, you and your team are tasked with accomplishing your given goals. Implementing the right sort of teams can help overcome this hurdle, especially when considering some of the growing pains associated with developing any remote team. The tools are ready, you might as well just use them.

Communicate

In an office, a team member is just a stone’s throw away. However, how does that work when you’ve got a software engineer who’s in Europe while you’re in the United States? Remote work is great for obtaining qualified and thoroughly vetted candidates. It leaves something to be desired when it comes to developing pathways to effective communication.

That’s where you, the team leader, come in, however. Your first order of business when developing a high-performing remote team is to look at the steps needed to develop effective communication pathways. Having a chat client is great, but you need multiple forms of communication.

Voice calls, video conferencing, and message boards can all help to diminish the disadvantages seen in remote work communication. You’ve likely already got the means at your organization to develop and establish a solid working environment with plenty of options for effectively communicating with a team member.

Collaborate

Now, what’s the core word in a high-performing remote team? If you said team, you’re correct. Any business endeavor, especially in larger organizations, is a team effort. You aren’t flying solo when completing a project, so why should your team? At the end of the day, you need to develop in-roads that invite collaboration when working.

This can come in the form of developing the likes of group chats to keep workers on task and keep them effectively communicating. Alternatively, tools like Google’s GSuite allow for multiple workers to handle the same document.

Collaboration is the lifeblood of any organization’s projects. Think about it, a new app isn’t developed solely by a single person. There is quite a bit of work that goes into the development, refinement, and ultimate delivery of any product. A team should as a function, so encourage them to do so.

Stay Agile

Teams have to adapt to any challenges that come their way. Remote work is fraught with disadvantages when considering some of the traditional methods of managing a team. When considering developing a high-performing remote team, however, you’ll find one of the more difficult tasks is keeping them on task when something goes pear-shaped.

In an office, you can readily push initiatives and efforts to maintain order amongst chaos. The same can be said for remote work, but it’ll take a bit of elbow grease from everyone to accommodate it. Further, this also applies to the likes of new technologies.

It seems like every year we hear about some new wonder technology that will revolutionize the way we work. In some ways, this is true, technology is marching forward steadily. Learning to adapt and utilize those tools will go much further than staying fixed at one point in time.

Other Useful Tools and Concepts

Ready to learn some more? Learning how to develop design thinking in cross-functional teams can seem like a difficult task. However, design thinking is a flexible and effective means of developing new products, and cross-functional teams might be the preferred way of utilizing this approach.

Additionally, you might want to see which industries stand to lose the most when it comes to the advent of artificial intelligence. AI is here to stay, and learning to adapt ahead of time is going to minimize headaches and heartbreak.

Conclusion

Developing a high-performing remote team isn’t necessarily a difficult task. It takes effort and consideration that doesn’t enter the conversation compared to piecing together a team for an in-person effort. However, with the right measures in place, your remote team can be more effective than in-person staff when it comes to the task at hand.

The image featured at the top of this post is ©Ground Picture/Shutterstock.com.