Ask good questions

In a remote team, you'll need the right tools to make sure everyone stays on the same page and can continue to execute without a physical person standing next to them.

You likely will need a tool in certain categories like group chat and video conferencing to make remote successful.

Good processes let you get work done in the absence of all else. They provide structure and direction for getting things done.

A few examples from Zapier:

• Weekly Hangouts;
• Weekly One-on-Ones;
• Bring the team together 2 times/year somewhere cool;
• Automate anything that can be automated.

"Someone asked me where I get all my good ideas, explaining that it takes him a month or two to come up with one and I seem to have more than that. I asked him how many bad ideas he has every month. He paused and said, 'None.'"

Create a safe place, free from criticism, because we tend to clam up if we feel like we're going to be criticized.

Rather than criticizing what you don't like, focus on getting ideas out in the open so you can build on them.

Voice and video calls can help you feel more in touch with your team and avoid the issues of asynchronous communication like time lags or misunderstandings.

However, you'll likely spend a lot of your day communicating via text as it’s a good way to interact without interrupting their work. So you need to be able to get your point across clearly and simply, show empathy and understanding, and be efficient to avoid wasted time.

Remote workers can feel overwhelmed by the amount of text they have to process. So finding ways to keep on top of what's going on is imperative for communicating efficiently with others.

Create archive lists and CC irrelevant emails to them, so you can save and share them without flooding non-involved people. 

• Set clear expectations and make an effort to be a good listener.
• Set clear boundaries. Establish a preferred time for communications so you feel respected and acknowledged.
• Get to know others. Remote workers often have purely transactional interactions. Listen to people and get to know them.
• Update people on what you’re working on and your availability. 

A co-located office develops its own personality through inside jokes, shared experiences, and a collaborative environment. A remote team needs to develop something similar.

Creating specific Slack channels based on interests and book clubs where the company funds the books are the easiest ways to do this for remote workers.

For many of us, the office becomes a fun place due to a sense of community, purpose and fun interactions that make up an office day. To try and mimic your office culture virtually:

1. Set up Slack channels for water cooler conversation
2. Schedule virtual movie days, when the same movie is streamed with the chat option on.
3. Try to recreate virtual versions of what employees miss the most in office, like a coffee break, for instance.

Being social at office lubricates official conversations and the work itself. The more we spend time with colleagues having non-essential chatter, the easier our work becomes with them.

It helps to be creative and infuse fun into a virtual interaction. Any official conversation, like a manager meeting his subordinates in a one-on-one meeting, can start by asking about the person’s life (something unrelated to work), so that a connection is built.

While real-time communication inside of a team might lead to solving faster some issues, it also has various disadvantages. 

For instance, having your colleagues come to ask you questions to which you feel pressured to answer on the spot leads to you being continuously interrupted, which results in being less productive and feeling stressed or even getting a burnout, as you try to do everything in proper time.

When the employees are provided with control as to when they are willing to communicate with their co-workers, there are many advantages that emerge. 

For instance, having the freedom to decide exactly how your working day should look like leads to more satisfied employees as well as to better communication within the team. Further benefits vary from feeling less stressed due to better planning to greater transparency and more efficient work.

• Loneliness was reported as the biggest downside for 21% of remote employees, and one of the reasons that makes them more likely to quit.
• Most remote managers say they’d be more inclined to stay if they had more friends at work.
• Individuals who have 15 minutes to socialize with colleagues have a 20% increase in performance over their peers who don't.
• Positive social relationships are correlated with better life expectancy.

If your icebreaker questions are intriguing, cheeky, humorous – the answers you receive will be, too.

Many remote teams will kick off their weekly meeting with an icebreaker question or insert it during their morning stand-up meeting. Even more popular is asking a series of icebreaker questions during the onboarding process when hiring someone.

By scheduling every minute of your day you not only guard against distraction but also multiply your focus.

Also, focusing on one task at a time can make you up to 80% more productive than splitting your attention across multiple tasks.

• It takes a lot of time and effort.
• Few of us (if any) have the same schedule every day.
• We’re bad at estimating how long tasks will take to do.
• Constant interruptions and “urgent” tasks can destroy your system.
• Flexibility is key in most workplaces.
• You can lose sight of the bigger picture if you focus just on each day.

Reaching out and offering your help to a new colleague, for example, is a great way to start a conversation.
It can feel weird, but in a remote setup, this is the only way these chats will happen.

A great way to start a conversation with a teammate is to respond privately to comments made in public channels.
For example:

• Your comment was very funny!
• Great job on solving that tricky issue!
• Thank you for answering my question, I appreciate your perspective.

Working from home does not mean you are a remote worker. For a lot of people “working from home” is synonymous with not really working, but instead sitting at home in comfy clothes and doing anything but working. Because no one is really watching you.

• Assume remote, even if you have only 1 person that is not coming to the office. So make sure to share all the information from meetings in a written format.
• Have a private, quiet, dedicated space for working in your home. Preferably with a door that closes.
• Have the right digital equipment.
• Over-communicate.
• Make sure you get to actual meet your colleagues face to face.
• Have a time overlap with your team.