Managing Virtual Team Members
Managing a remote (virtual) team has some nuances over managing an onsite team. A few adjustments can make a big difference in your success with virtual team members. Here are a few techniques that can help your remote resources work as part of a productive team.
- Hold frequent short meetings. Schedule meetings 3 times a week for 15 minutes. These meetings provide quick opportunities to understand what’s happening — like conversations you have when you’re co-located with your team members. These discussions can identify problems early so remote team members don’t get stuck solving problems on their own. These meetings can be with small groups or 1-on-1 depending on the number of team members and their role on your project.
- Foster a team the same way you do when you’re co-located. Reserve time for checking in on how your team members are doing and give them a chance to share with each other. Consider virtual coffee breaks where you don’t spend much time on business. Instead, encourage each team member to talk about what they’re doing outside of work or what their favorite work activities are. Or they can describe a book/podcast/video that they enjoyed.
- Insist on good video conference capabilities. Phone calls are good, but video conference meetings are better…when the technology works. Seeing someone’s non-verbal cues helps you understand how meetings are going and connect with remote team members. If you don’t have video conferencing, make sure speaker phones work well. Nothing is worse than being remote and not hearing discussions, or not being able to contribute because you can’t be heard.
- Arrange participation in meetings for all attendees. Give each attendee a purpose in meetings. Consider a role for every attendee in your virtual team meetings. Rotate coordination responsibilities for the meeting, such as delivering project status items or stakeholder perceptions. This approach relieves some project management workload while increasing meeting engagement.
- Increase the frequency of feedback sessions. All team members benefit from feedback delivered by the PM. Virtual team members need this feedback even more, because they might not participate in other deliverable discussions. The sessions don’t have to be extensive. They can focus on one or two specific deliverables or presentations, and the impressions they generated. Feedback keeps virtual team members engaged and comfortable about their contributions.
Have you encountered problems dealing with remote team members? Or have you found ways to engage remote team members and improve their productivity? Share your questions or tips in the comments section.
For more about working with remote teams, check out Cyndi Snyder Dionisio’s Leading Remote Project and Virtual Teams course.
Coming Up
Project success is driven to a large extent by healthy relationships within your project teams, which is why a lot of people skills go into project management. In this Office Hours on June 1, 2023, at 11:00am MT, Todd Dewitt will join me to talk about how to build better relationships – by learning to overcome our own fears and by building rapport with others through empathy and mutual respect.
Todd will be sharing some of the insights and strategies from his new book, Dancing with Monsters. I’m a big believer in relationship-building, so I’m looking forward to this conversation. I hope you’ll join us and bring your questions and challenges! Here’s the link to join: https://www.linkedin.com/events/betterrelationships-betterresul7060330084796170240
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