Remote working has become more common than ever and here are few mistakes to avoid when managing a remote team, one of which is to ensure proper communication.
Remote Team Management is no easy task. Besides minimal facilities due to work from home in CoViD, this can be worse especially if you are new to working with remote employees. It’s one thing to motivate remote employees on call, but what common mistakes should be avoided in managing a remote team?
A remote team is far different from a regular team. On that note, 5 critical mistakes to avoid when managing a remote team:
Managing Remote Teams with Poor Communication
Communication is the key to many of the basic functions of management, from the planning and organizing of outcomes, to motivating and controlling employees in the organization. Keeping the communication clear and concise would also help increase the group cohesiveness toward achieving a task.
To manage remote teams with poor communication is a critical mistake when it comes to remote teams, with several consequences. With poor communication, the remote team is much more susceptible to an increased risk of errors that could occur during different tasks. It also leaves greater room for misunderstandings or misinformation.
In other words you have a situation where no one knows what exactly should be done, when it should be done, or even how! Communication is fundamental for proper organization, scheduling and allocation of tasks.
Many processes need to be explained to employees, especially to the new members of your team. If nobody knows what to do and what others are doing, they will be demotivated to proceed with work. A regular briefing about everything is needed, while the team’s achievements to keep them going.
Communication is essential for any business. Keeping this in mind, a dependable instant voice calling solution helps here, as it does not require preparation for call unlike video call. With its ease of communication, MultiCall comes in handy here for managing remote teams. Not only does it allow carrying outgroup calling in one go, there is no hassle typical of conferencing either.
Free of PINs and moderators, it is an instant solution for calling many. In addition, the participants of the call do not need to relate to data or even have the app installed. MultiCall requires data only to initiate the call.
Micromanaging Remote Employees
We know micromanaging as a process where a manager may handle every minute aspect of a task that their employees do. Now in some cases, it can be extremely helpful considering that you want a certain finesse or perfection in the tasks involved. More often than not however, it is very annoying, and can lead to inefficiency and counter-productivity.
Micromanaging your remote employees can leave them unhappy. Their perceived inability to perform anything without having to report to their manager every step of the way can leave them feeling miserable. This also may not give them enough time for other important tasks that require attention.
In addition, they also may feel trapped due to perceived lack of creative control. This can also lead to some of them leaving your team. Rather than micromanage everything they do, giving the team a framework to use and allowing control over their workday would be more appropriate.
MultiCall serves as a great tool for managers to communicate with their team for any needs. This is regardless of whether it is about efficiently allocating tasks for your team or instilling motivation and trust as the world struggles on in a time like this.
In just one click, management communication becomes simpler and faster with the ability to connect to your team from anywhere, and anytime. Besides this, the freedom from office distractions and provision of greater autonomy would mean that your team members are able to get more done.
Irregularly updating on the news
Communication allows you to bring the team up to date on the latest developments, and to ensure situational awareness for everyone. Considering this, updating your team irregularly or worse, rarely, is one of the biggest mistakes while managing remote teams.
It can leave your team confused when they find new requirements or developments that they haven’t heard of. This can lead them to infer that you aren’t being transparent with them, significantly decreasing their trust in you as a result.
Sending regular updates via a given communication channel is essential.MultiCall’s Call Scheduling feature helps with this in multiple ways:
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- Managers can then select the date and the time at which they wish to execute the call to meeting with their team.
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- Should they wish to repeat the call, they can choose between the options of Every Day, Every Week and Every Month.
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- Last but not least, they can customize the call duration too, with a maximum duration of 120 minutes on a 5-minute basis.
Managing Remote Teams with No Goals or Expectations
Having no goals or expectations, in effect no aim, can easily destroy a team’s motivation. It’d in effect show no accountability not just as an effective manager, but also in the team’s talent as well.
The shift to remote work means that you have the leeway to reset your team’s expectations. This includes giving and receiving constructive feedback. Empathizing with them is key, too. You can ask, for instance, “What three things would you try to change if you were in my role?”.
It’s important to be available and flexible for an effective relationship with your team, so this crisis is also a good time to sit down with your team to assess and improve goals and expectation. With virtually all our work online, the margin of error in coordination and leadership failures is far less, and yet we’re more susceptible to it.
This is why it’d be a great opportunity for having a MultiCall with others to discuss and execute any necessary corrections in courses of action. You can do this by communicating what you know, and being transparent by acknowledging the fact that much is still unknown about aspects lying ahead. You can invite teammates to share their knowledge, initiative concerns and queries as well.
Rushing Through Meetings with Decreased Interactions
Rushing through meetings and decreasing interactions can have a detrimental influence on the productivity of your virtual team, and therein is a critical mistake to avoid. It’s necessary to always schedule meetings for a time when everyone involved can attend. Preparing for the same in advance also would help with effective group interactions
Making sure that everyone is heard is important too. It’s critical to getting to know your teammates better. This is also helpful in order to maintain a growth mindset during crisis. You can get to interact with your team better over a MultiCall. With the ability to call your entire team in one go, one of the primary features MultiCall offers is call monitoring; giving you complete control over the call.
This is inclusive of being able to mute/unmute participants, so as to help avoid disturbance due to noise on call. And even in the event that a user gets dropped, they can re-join the call by simply dialing back the same number.
We have learned a lot from COVID-19. The lockdown to counter the pandemic continues to extend, with employers and employees alike still figuring the exact road toward effectively and efficiently managing remote teams. Yes, more problems or issues may present themselves. But there are common mistakes in managing a remote team at present that can be resolved. This is key to reaching more, now.
“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” - Henry Ford
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