5 Problems When Managing Remote Teams

While managing remote teams, employers face a particular number of common problems. Such problems prevent employers and employees from being productive and efficient. If you are a newbie, they may even seem a disaster. 

But don’t worry, every trouble can be solved if you have enough knowledge and expend enough efforts. Your workers will be grateful for it, and your business will definitely achieve success. So, today we want to distinguish the most common problems of the remote teams’ management and find the best solutions for them.

1. Non-synchronous communication

Problem: There often happens that team members are located in different time zones. As a result, the messages you send may be read by your workers within indefinite time. That’s why there is no “online communication” when everybody’s involved right now and right there. One small but important problem causes others bigger ones like misunderstanding, loss of productivity and a necessity to figure out the same issue for many times. 

Solution: It’s essential to know special tools and ways how to communicate together at the same time period. Thanks to our generation, we have lots of useful apps that help deal with it. You should not do a lot: just learn how to use them, and, eventually, use them. As an employer, you should take care of this step to make giving and performing of tasks easier and faster.

2. Relationships first, tools second

Problem: A lot of employers make the same mistake. They provide tools, give tasks, discuss a project right from the start of cooperation, forgetting about one important step. They forget to build close communication between each other. In such case, the workers may feel less engaged into the process and even feel out of process and the team itself.

Solution: Building trust and common ground is your first task. Arranging video conferences, which help to communicate face-to-face being situated in different places of the planet, is a great idea to make it. It’ll help you to control the remote team better and explain the task easier. Understanding is the key!

3.Building team culture

Problem: It is not enough to only be a good leader and to build trust between you and the workers. Enjoyable team culture is something more. Entirely business dealings can’t give all the profits for effective cooperation with the remote team. Again, the team might not feel fully engaged into the working process.

Solution: What you need to do is to communicate “outside the project”. Knowing interests of your workers, such-called academic discussions and congratulating each other on holidays are those pleasant stuff, which makes the people working together feel themselves as parts of one great thing. Take care of this part of management and you’ll receive unexpected feedback from the workers. Be on the same wave!

4.Talking without highlighting

Problem: Sometimes, after discussing some task or some point, after talking about some important things and so on, members and the employer don’t, actually, get what they decided. This is like not catching the conclusion of the meeting. As a result, everyone does his task on his manner, making the working process disorganized.

Solution: The best way to avoid this problem is to make sure the main thought of the conversation is clear for everybody. We advise you to highlight such main thoughts in a written form. In many cases, the visual perception, in fact, is better than any other for standing out the most important information. Take it into account when you want something significant to be revealed to each “head” of the team.

5.Encourage the growth

Problem: Every freelancer must improve himself and upgrade his skills. It is perfect when they do it by themselves. However, if you want to show you take your workers serious and that you want to cooperate with them on a high level, you should help them to find the ways to become better specialists. The employers tend to neglect this step, not picking out the advantages of such encouragement. In this way, they reduce the productivity of work and the success of performing their project by themselves.

Solution: Invest into the improvement of your team. Offer participating in workshops and discussion groups, use your potentialities as a businessman in a useful way toward yourself and others. You can’t imagine how much profit such approach could bring. 

We viewed the main mistakes which the employers are prone to making. If you have ever had questions about why your team perform on a low level and why you can’t manage them as successfully as possible, then, maybe, you will find solutions here.

Anyway, remember that managing the remote team is not an easy task and it’s okay, when you make mistakes. You should identify them and solve the problems that they cause. Such an approach will never let you down and bring many achievements to your business and projects.