How To Get Remote Teams To Work Together

When the great work-from-home experiment started, and organizations around the world sent their people to work from home, many team leaders started to sense that they weren’t managing a team of 12 so much as managing 12 individual employees. 

People know how to easily connect with their bosses and show them what is getting done. But those same people struggled to find ways to work together. Despite seemingly endless video conferences, requests for help made directly to peers dropped, and collaboration quickly followed. 

Newly remote employees were working alone, but they weren’t working alone together.

Not everyone, though.

Lessons From Teams That Worked Right

Teams that already had experience working as a team remotely—whether in fully distributed companies or because their offices were already flexible—didn’t suffer the same fate as those teams who had remote work thrust upon them. 

Those teams knew how to “work out loud,” having learned from experience and trial and error. Working out loud meant that the team had developed a system to keep track of what everyone was focused on and what was getting done. There was also a system for asking for help and volunteering. 

This means that when project pivots occur, the team doesn’t have to wait until the next all-hands call to learn about them.

In this article, we’ll cover a simple and easy way to get started helping your team work out loud and, hence, to get your remote team to work together. It all revolves around three easy questions. (If you’re familiar with Agile and the “scrum,” then you’ll recognize these questions.) 

The questions are:

• What did I just work on?
• What am I working on?
• What is blocking my progress?

You can phrase these questions in a variety of different ways. But the point is that these three, taken together, offer a time to provide a project update, a time to forecast what’s happening next, and space to make requests for help that often don’t happen on newly remote teams.

Let’s look at each question in turn.

What Did I Just Work On?

It may seem obvious to start with the question, “What did I just work on?” but this is about progress updates. 

It’s about breaking the long-term project down into short-term deliverables and being able to track progress accordingly. But it’s also about small wins. It can provide an opportunity to celebrate how far the team has come, and progress is a powerful way to keep a team motivated. 

It provides an opportunity to share lessons learned. Rarely, if ever, does a long-term project’s completion look like what was intended at the beginning. That’s because individuals learn, reflect, and change as they engage in the work. 

Sharing “What did I just work on?” also provides the opportunity to answer “What did I just learn?”

What Am I Working On?

Asking the second question, “What am I working on?” is also about progress updates. Better said, it’s about synchronizing tasks and forecasting future progress. It provides an opportunity for everyone to share what their focus is for the next day, week, or however long it is between now and the next check-in. 

But this question has the added benefit of making sure no one is duplicating effort. Without keeping the team in sync, it’s possible (and frequent) that two individual team members focus on the same set of tasks. Without a chance to have everyone on the team share what their next deliverable is, you could end up only finding out when those tasks are finished. 

The inverse is also true. Individuals might assume other teammates have a project task covered and ignore it. Without checking to make sure, critical tasks might never get done. But, taking a quick moment for everyone to answer, “What am I working on?” helps prevent these setbacks.

What is Blocking My Progress?

Speaking of setbacks, the third and final question ensures that people can avoid them. By answering “What is blocking my progress?” individuals on the team can request help from the whole team. 

Setbacks happen. People get stuck. 

But in a remote work environment, they mostly share their stuck-ness with their manager. That’s how a team of 12 breaks down into just 12 individual relationships. If everyone’s only communicating with a team leader, then the team leader can get overloaded keeping track of who needs what and who else can help. 

Including this question in regular team check-ins gets the team talking to each other again. By answering “What is blocking my progress?” you make space for teammates to ask for help—and for others to volunteer help.

You don’t have to ask these exact questions. Depending on the people on your team and the work that you’re doing, you may want to rewrite them to fit a bit better. At the same time, you don’t need to spend too much time focusing on the technology or method you use to track answers to these questions. 

There is existing software that you can utilize or plugins to project management software you can install. But the technology doesn’t matter as much as the questions themselves. There are multinational virtual teams that use simple spreadsheets or daily emails. 

It doesn’t even have to be daily. Let the team experiment and find the right interval that doesn’t overload teammates but doesn’t lead them to under-communicate. To start, just focus on asking these questions and asking them regularly.

Because when you focus on these questions and your team is finally comfortable asking and answering them regularly, you’ll find that your team has a much easier time focusing on each other. That is what really drives a remote team to work together.

Importance of Psychological Safety

The thing about remote work is that physical distance can create feelings of isolation or even cause miscommunication among the employees. Here, we come to the concept of Psychological Safety, which was coined by Amy Edmondson from Harvard.

Psychological safety is a shared belief that a team is a safe place for interpersonal risks. It’s a safe place where team members can express their thoughts and ideas and, more importantly, willingly accept their mistakes without fear of punishment or ridicule.

Since people cannot see each other in remote settings, they usually do not receive nonverbal cues, read body language, or have spontaneous interactions.

People are often reluctant to voice their opinions. They also fear judgment, which keeps many of your employees from speaking up or expressing their ideas. However, communication is the key to success. 

So, you need to push every team member to contribute to brainstorming sessions and meetings. Here are some ways you can encourage your workforce to speak out.

Encourage Open Dialogue

You can create a forum for team members to discuss challenges or seek guidance outside official team meetings. Opening anonymous feedback channels on tools like Slack can also help.

• As a leader, you must model behavior and admit that you face challenges and often don’t have the right answers. In fact, you should be willing to learn from the rest of the team.
• Always offer support and positive feedback and acknowledge the team’s contributions and ideas, even if they are not actionable.

Leverage Technology 

Technology is the backbone of the remote team.

As a remote team, you will use various tools for project management, file sharing, and communication. 

But, you must ensure that these tools align with the team’s needs to remain effective.

Always choose reputed platforms like Zoom, Slack, Trello, or Asana without overloading the team with too much. Focus on only those tools that you need for file sharing, video conferencing, or whatever your needs are for tracking. Minimize the need to use multiple apps or multiple tools.

Tips for Building Team Culture

You can make the remote team work together if you create a culture and environment that facilitates it. Some tips you can try to build a team culture in a virtual team are as follows.

• Give virtual coffee breaks to your employees and encourage them to spend time in team-building games or weekly Happy Hours to bond with each other.
• Again, recognition is a major responsibility of management. Whether completing a big project or making a small individual contribution, it positively impacts the team’s efforts. 
• Encourage your employees to share personal updates, celebrate birthdays, or discuss their hobbies to make your interactions more human. When employees know each other personally, they will likely collaborate and support each other.

Wrap Up

Building a collaborative remote team requires maintaining psychological safety, using technology to your advantage, and creating a virtual culture. 

It’s challenging to overcome the physical distance, but not impossible. Keeping things open can streamline collaboration and create a sense of connection within the team, resulting in a fulfilling and engaging experience for all members. 

Remember, remote work is all about working together no matter where you are physically present.