As more companies transition to offering remote work possibilities, more professionals strive to acquire skills that work in the virtual world. But one skill that remains a challenge in the remote work environment is leadership skills.
How does one ensure effective leadership when working remotely?
If you are planning on working from home, you want to ensure better leadership for your team.
This guide will show you the tips you need to follow.
Let’s start with communication:
1. How to Communicate With Remote Teams
As a team leader, your first step should be to familiarize yourself with the best applications for virtual communication.
You should set one of these applications as the tool that your team will use. This will be to discuss projects, issues, and general chat.
Make sure you become an expert with this application. This way, you can assist them if they have trouble using the application.
You also need to set communication protocols with your team. For example, when working on a project, every team member should send an update once per week. John can share, “I published the Press Release on our blog today…” while Joe can share, “I’ve updated the marketing budget on Google Sheets…”
Make sure that you are also communicating regularly with your team. Let them know how the project is going, that you are proud of their work, etc.
Next, let’s look at how to tackle remote assignments:
2. Remote Project Management
You must have processes in place for project management. This is also one of the ways to hold your team members (and yourself) accountable for their work.
You can have your team members submit their work through project management software. This can range from Asana to Google Suite.
As a leader, you should consider creating an instruction manual on how to complete a project. There should be guidelines for each type of project: marketing, accounting, content creation, etc. Guidelines should discuss how to start a project, how to submit it, and which team members are involved in a project (with their respective positions).
Finally, let’s look at how to handle issues with remote working:
3. Handling Issues Through Effective Leadership
Make sure you familiarize yourself with the issues that occur with remote working. You should have a protocol in place to handle these issues.
For instance, what if a team member loses access to the internet for a long duration? Can another team member access their work to complete it?
You might have workers with no experience with working from home. If so, you should offer guidance on how to be productive with remote working.
While it’s not always ideal to communicate remotely, you have to find ways to challenge team members if they are slacking with their work. The ideal way is to use a video call through Skype or Zoom as opposed to sending a stern email.
Effective leadership involves not being afraid to address challenges even when it’s uncomfortable to do so.
Start Transitioning to Remote Working
Now that you know how to have effective leadership when working from home, you are ready to manage a remote team. Make sure to share this guide with all supervisors within the remote teams in your company.
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