Managing Global Remote Teams – Quick Tips

In the era of globalization, when many companies going global, most of us who are leaders are already managing global teams and those who are not, would certainly be doing at some point in the future . This has become one of the essential skills for all the Managers and Leaders. You cannot survive without being really good at this.

This is a detailed topic and difficult to summarize in a short post. However, let me list down some of the quick tips which I found most useful while managing my several global teams spreads across different geographies and locations on different projects: 

1. A Team charter is must

This is really important. Although this is not project charter, however I would suggest Project Manager to also highlight the objective of project in this document. This is important for team members to know the purpose why they are working on the project and how they are contributing to this objective and especially when they are spread across locations. As sense of purpose unites the team.

A team charter should clearly underline that how the decision would be made in the project. This should contains communication plan, conflict resolution process, backup plan and personal responsibilities of team members in different situations.

This charter should be prepared taking all the team members in confidence and this should be their plan which they have agreed to and own (not imposed to them)

2. Understand the cultural preferences

When you are working on the team with the people from different countries and cultures, understanding the cultural diversity and giving respect to that is important. 

For example - when I do my Project Plan and I assume less or no resource availability during Christmas week for US, Australia and UK teams, I also assume that most of the team members from team in India would not be available during week of Diwali.

Certain cultures are not very open to ask questions and while other are very forthcoming. Try to understand these and tailor your communication according to that.

3. A Daily stand up or Catch-up

I use this learning from my Agile projects. However, later I found this a must if you are managing a remote Global team irrespective of Project Management methodologies you are using (Agile or traditional). 

Find a convenient time of the day, when team members from all the locations are available. Get everyone on a phone or Video Conferencing call. Quick 30 Minutes call every day at the same time, get the status, set the priorities for the day and quickly discuss any key risks or issues. 

If you want to keep your project on track, I find this a must to do when you are managing virtual teams, otherwise you might lose your hold on project after sometime.

4. One on One sessions with team members

When you are working at the same location, you have the opportunities to walk to a team member’s desk or catch him/her over the coffee and do some informal talk which would build personal relationship.  However, in case of virtual team this is not possible. Make sure you have scheduled quick One on One sessions with the team members on agreed frequency and mode (Over call or VC).

If you have big team and it’s not possible to do One on One with everyone, do this at least with the leaders in the team and ask them to do the same with their teams.

5. Leverage the collaborative technology to maximum

I really like the screen sharing tools where one person is sharing what he is talking about and others have a common perspective. Be it video conferencing, phone conference call, content management solutions or apps like slack  for quick updates on cell phones, use the technology to maximum to collaborate (and thanks goodness ! we have so many options available now a days on these tools).

6. Daily end of day reports from team members

I found this very useful when you work with remote team in different time zones. Team members sending a quick bullet points email before leaving for the day on what they have achieved throughout the day, Whether they are facing any current issues, what they are expecting their counterparts in different time zones to focus on for their rest of the day and what they are planning to do tomorrow.

I have done this myself and found this really useful. This gives you a purpose for the day and the sense of accomplishment when you draft the work done by end of day each day. 

7. Make use of Sun Model

Assuming you already know ‘Follow the Sun Model’ where teams working in the different time zones on a same project and tasks are passed around daily between different office locations. 

When I was working out of USA and liaising with client and if they had any query or issues to resolve , I used to pass this on to my team members in India and they used to work during my night time on those (their day time 😄)  and I was ready next day when I face the client.  

8. Virtual Team Building activities

Be innovative to find ways to do this. May be you organize games over Video Conferencing or some online contests.  When a local festival celebrated in one office, you can have people in other offices join through VC. When you do award ceremonies, do not do it location wise. Do it for all the team members even though some of the team members are available on conference call or VC. 

9. Rotate team members to get some face to face time

This all depends on how much budget you have, however highly recommended. Rotate team members to visit other locations during key activities of project. 

For example - if design team in a country has to handover designs to development team which is in another country, few team members of them can visit for a short duration, do the handover and at the same time would meet the team members in the other location and build rapport.

If not possible for all the team members to do this due to budget constraints, I recommend this should be must for the Project Manager to visit all the locations and meet team members face to face at least once in the start of project. 

10. Reward team members for being responsible to others

Collaboration is so important in a virtual team and team members who are good team players, helping other team members succeed and show respect to cultural diversity and collaborate for success using all the available resources should be rewarded. 

This should be one of the key goals for their performance appraisal and evaluated appropriately by Project Manager and provided feedback on continuous basis highlight areas of improvements, if any.

If you have any questions or suggestions on how to manage a virtual global team more effectively, please feel free to comment.