3 tips for leading a team that works remotely

Virtual meetings, hybrid work, working remotely. For many of us, it’s become part of our daily lives over the past couple of years. According to recent research from Gallup, 45% of total workers in the U.S. are working remotely (25% working exclusively at home, and 20% working at home part-time). Upwork also estimates that 22% of the workforce will work remotely full-time by 2025. So, it seems like virtual meetings may be here to stay for some time.

Frankly, it can be hard, even awkward at times. During a virtual meeting, have you ever been the only person to laugh at a joke you made, or felt like you were having a meeting with yourself? I know I have. But, through the awkward moments and technical difficulties, there’s something that I learned, not only about how I’ve adapted to this new work environment, but also about leading a team of people.

First, let me tell you about my group.

What is a “Catalyst for Change” group?

As part of our culture at Telstra Americas, we have several employee resource groups called “Catalyst for Change” – all of them are voluntary, employee-led communities with a different goal in mind. One aims to foster employee learning and development; another to develop a diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace culture; and another to create a space for community engagement and activism.

I had the honor of co-leading the Market Insights group, which aims to increase discussion around industry trends. This was a new group, so the possibilities were endless, but so were the potential challenges. Through it all, I gained some wisdom about leading a remote team, and I’d like to share some of those learnings.

Tip 1: Use active listening and powerful questions

In the absence of friendly eye contact to connect with people, I leaned heavily on listening. A tool for active listening is asking powerful questions and coming from a beginner’s mindset. Powerful questions are content questions, feeling questions, and need questions: “Can you explain? How do you feel about? What would you like to happen?” Playback what you heard from the speaker to confirm you understood the speaker correctly.

Coming from a beginner’s mindset eliminates any assumption and helps you understand and create empathy to feel what the speaker is feeling. In your next virtual meeting, I challenge you to end your conversation with a summary statement.

Tip 2: Define your purpose and focus on outcomes

After establishing the human connection, I believe that the first few wins are important to earn the trust of the group. Getting us to a win required dedication and delivering on my commitments. We scheduled a bi-weekly meeting with the whole group. In-between group meetings, I met with my co-leader and group advisor to develop concise and specific agendas, so that we had meaningful meetings and set milestones to get us closer to what we were trying to achieve. My perspective is that although this was an opt-in extracurricular outside of my day-to-day, I brought the mentality to deliver. When we committed to organizing a program such as producing a video for Yammer, our internal social board, I prioritized the project and filled in any gaps to ensure a completed product even if it meant learning a new skill such as editing videos.

Tip 3: Celebrate the team’s successes

Finally, the best part of being a leader is the opportunity to celebrate the group’s successes! Publicly praising individual team members and the group’s achievements are my favorite tasks on my to-do list. Especially in a virtual world, we tend to remember the people whose faces we see often and forget our other colleagues! I leveraged our internal company platform, Appreciate, to call-out the amazing work each individual member accomplished.

Conclusion

As a leader every day, I rely on keeping an open mind and a positive attitude. Energy goes a long way in virtual meetings. Actively listening, creating purpose and value in your group, and celebrating wins built a foundation to lead an award-winning team. Remote work may be here to stay, so I hope you found these tips useful.

 Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn so we can share knowledge in the future.