Working with remote teams is different from working with ordinary teams, as a lot of things can go wrong. Miscommunication due to the lack of face-to-face interactions, misaligned goals and issues caused by different time zones can fatally lead to failure and frustrate weeks and weeks of hard labor.
It is then advisable to comply with some best practices that have been worked out by some business experts of digital team management. Therefore, we have listed below 3 very effective tips to successfully manage a remote team.
Technology first
It is difficult to manage remote workers without the right technology. It is not only a matter of HD definition; consider, for example, the problem of remote real time collaboration: the delay of frames during a conference call can be so much disturbing that participants prefer to hung up and withdraw on a traditional text chat.
In that case, you won’t be able to utilize that stunning presentation you devoted a whole day to prepare, to share screens or record your conference.
This is the reason why it is important to opt for professional video conferencing tools like R-HUB`s TurboMeeting (http://www.rhubcom.com) , a suite of video conferencing servers that assures fast and seamless streaming with very low delay, high quality image definition, crisp audio and all the necessary tools to engage your audience, like file sharing and polling.
Other reliable video conferencing solutions that are commonly used by organizations are GoToMeeting and Cisco Web Conferencing.
Stay on schedule
Delay or anticipate a virtual meeting is not as easy as you can expect. Remember that people are not physically there. So, you cannot constrain them to wait for some few minutes, and they could react to the new of a delay by missing the conference.
This happens quite often, especially when there are problems connected with different time zones, as distant worker have more difficulties in rearranging their daily time schedules than ordinary office workers.
Stick to your original plan
Dana Fox, Director of Global Customer Success at Athena Software, says that it is important “to clock the conversation and anticipate the transition for the next topic to make the shift easy and natural.” A good way to help people to keep focused is to state the length, the purpose and the possible outcomes of the conference or the individual speech at the beginning.
Make an agenda and stick to it once you have got it across to your team, as people do not welcome sudden changes of plans. Last, remember that you are the leader. Therefore, try to avoid deviations from each individual points set in your agenda.