“Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them.”
Connecting remote teams across the country – or around the world – is a feature of the modern business world. The remote work vs return to office debate is all the rage today, which is best for your team? Let’s watch Amazon’s return to work and see how that goes!
Even if the team has implemented a return to office plan, often times substantial travel can disrupt connections between teams and create a pseudo-remote culture.
At Cairn Leadership, we often work with teams on which a majority of the members have never met each other in person. We love the excitement from teams when they get to interact and connect for the first time in person on a hike or canoe trip.
Does this mean that remote work is bad and everyone should go back to the office? No, of course not. Remote work is here to stay. As a professional with with two young children, I am glad not to have to commute to a lot of meetings, but it takes work to keep the remote team connected.
The primary issue with remote work is when people feel misunderstood, demotivated, and confused, because they don’t feel connected. In this trail log, I’ll share 10 ways to make sure that does not happen on your remote team.
Leverage strong and weak ties
Mark Granovetter brought the idea of strong and weak ties to the forefront of research in the early 70’s. This idea is potentially even more important today.
As a leader, you need to build strong connections on your team to instill trust. These deep connections mean that people begin to care about each other as well. They go out of their way to help, and your team thrives because of that care. People also learn what everyone else does on the team, something we find shockingly rare on most teams.
Team members also need to connect with other teams, industries, and departments with weak ties. These acquaintance connections make it easier to accomplish your mission when you need help from HR or Marketing. They also bring in critical new ideas to help your team innovate and solve problems. The ability to generate large numbers of weak connections that can still be useful is a feature of the remote work paradigm.
Building strong ties is a leader’s job, and if you ignore weak ties your strong team will wither on the vine as it is disconnected from resources and avenues for growth. Check out one of my favorite Harvard Business Review articles on team communication for an in depth discussion of this idea.
Now, onto some actionable tips!
Ten ways to connect your remote team
1. Make QUALITY in-person time a priority.
McChrystal Group does excellent leadership consulting work, and they leverage Cairn Leadership to help run internal offsites, because they know building strong teams translates to great consulting work for their clients. Spending the time and money to bring people together for intentional touchpoints is an important investment. You should be doing this at least annually, but quarterly would be better. Downsize your office overhead and invest in offsites instead.
We can make your time together amazing and useful, but we don’t plan travel. Our friends at FeelSwell Experiences can help you plan every detail with intention, and resources like The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker can help you be intentional about how to use your meeting time.
2. Use video for remote meetings
Let’s be honest, if the meeting is not important enough for someone to be on video, it could have been an email. You could also send an AI generated recap to people who are lightly monitoring your meetings now. Either way, wasting people’s time on superfluous video calls sends the message that they don’t need to care, you don’t care, or both.
3. Ask about people (with structure).
Creating a five minute ritual of asking about people before asking about work brings remote teams together. Ask how weekends were. Ask how personal goals are going. Ask about the significance of the picture on their closet, I mean office, wall. Sharing short facilitated bits of personal life reminds people that these are the coworkers they used to talk to around the watercooler.
Avoid the trap! Don’t simply ask about everyone’s weekend weekend in an open question. Ask specific questions to specific people. Make it easy for people to share something meaningful instead of just saying “fine.” Make a note of what people say, put in the effort to show you care (because you do care, right??). Ask follow up questions next time you interact with your teammate.
4. Proactively facilitate connections.
Do your people travel often? Keep a map of where people are and pay them extra to have dinner together when they pass through each other’s towns.
This is one of the features I love most about our work at Cairn Leadership – we have guides across the country, from DC to San Diego and Seattle to Alabama, we frequently get the opportunity to connect in new contexts for an adventure or just dinner.
5. Bridge the time zones.
Obviously it’s bad form to schedule meetings that keep East coasters away from their families at 7pm or wake the PST crew up at 4am. Go a step farther though. Take a week to do all of your work on the same time zone as some of your dispersed team. Better yet, travel to their location once in a while to work with them for a week.
6. Start and use a 'like list.'
One of our clients shared this idea with me a couple months ago, and I love it. As part of your onboarding process, get a detailed list of your people’s preferences. Coffee or tea? Which brand? Favorite activities? Favorite foods, ways to meet up, outdoor gear brands? Make the list fit your culture. When someone has a tough day, a birthday, or huge success, you can send them something they actually like. They will feel much more connected!
7. Start and use a personal goals tracker.
Of course you’re tracking internal OKRs, but do you know what your employee’s personal goals are? By asking and tracking them, you can find ways to help fund courses and conferences and help them reach their goals faster. Someone wants to learn photography? Get them a online course! Chances are their new skill will benefit the team one day (offsite pictures?), and they will feel like the team helped them get there!
8. Run great meetings.
Countless hours get wasted by poorly planned or poorly executed meetings. If your people don’t know why they are on a video conference or they don’t know what to do, leadership has failed. Nothing demotivates and disconnects more than wasted time. Create a useful agenda and use it!
Pro tip: schedule meetings for 47 minutes and stick to that timeline. This takes discipline and respect for others – hallmarks of true professionals. People will appreciate the 13 minutes between meetings to process and refocus!
9. Sponsor "weak tie" opportunities.
Schedule social meetings or educational opportunities that include social hour with other teams and departments in your company. Ask an ideal client to come talk to your team on your weekly Zoom call and share their experience with your team’s work. Send people to conferences with an agenda and a structured report back requirement. Building good will around your team with weak ties will help you thrive in the long term!
10. Build in time and expectation for 1:1 meetings.
Ask people to set up 15-30 minute structured chats online once a month and then report back to you with a brief summary of the conversation. The key is to enforce reporting back, and to make the questions fun and useful. What’s the hardest part of your job? Where do you hope to be in 10 years? A common staple of networking groups, these conversations will absolutely connect your people with very little investment required.
