9 Ways to Intentionally Develop Your Remote Teams to Find Success

As the digital world and knowledge work continues to grow, businesses must adapt and utilize different tools to succeed. More companies turn to remote teams to create the highest potential teams since the internet makes it easier to send work and find the best people regardless of location.

Even though having a fully remote team can benefit your business, you must know how to get them to work together, and too many leaders do not have experience leading truly successful remote teams. Many companies get pressured to return to the office simply because managers rely on outdated tactics to give themselves a perception of control.

Some leaders though are open enough to ask for help and learn new skills. Doing so involves looking into their abilities, identifying where they perform well, and developing their talents to help them succeed.

If your employees can do their best, they’ll bring in better results, leading to more profit for your business. You must ensure to properly train and develop each team member so they reach their potential and push your business towards its performance goals.

I’ve led teams across six continents and dozens of countries at multiple companies. I’ve learned from great members from companies like Disney and others that have repeatedly grown companies sold to companies like Oracle. If you’re open to learning how to grow your skills and create top-performing fully remote teams, keep reading for some stories to help you find success.

The Benefits of Developing Talent in Remote Teams

If you want your remote team to succeed, you must develop a pool of talent with cultural traits that can be seen in action. Doing so will benefit your business in various ways, so ensure you review these benefits to understand why you must put time and effort into individual and team development.

Increased Productivity

I consistently see improved productivity on partially and fully remote teams. Anyone that has managed teams across office in multiple time zones and/or countries knows that you have to lead differently when people are not in front of you and that once you figure out that “unlock” that productivity skyrockets.

Allowing your teams to focus on outcomes over simple activities or only getting credit for workin within certain hours is an outdated way of production. Define the outcomes and results you need from your team, and let them work when they are most productive. Of course, you need to make sure there are clear handoffs in work and collaboration, but tools like Trello, Asana, ProductBoard, and Slack all have this built in.

How would your team work if you had ⅓ of your team in Atlanta, ⅓ in Paris, and ⅓ in Singapore? It’s hard to have overlap in hours between everyone, yet countless high-achieving teams have this figured out. Keep reading for ideas on how to reach this level of productivity.

Higher Job Satisfaction

Giving people more resources, flexibility, and and responsibility for the outcomeswill increase their job satisfaction. Your remote employees will feel like you want them to succeed as you develop them. They will feel good when they do their jobs and feel good about themselves.

They’ll naturally improve their work and overall quality as they feel more satisfied and can rely on your support to how their individual purpose matches with the company’s purpose.

Retention of Top Talent

If you want your individual employees to stay with your business, you must develop them. High-potential people want to grow. Some prefer challenges they want to solve themselves, others want mentoring, and yet others want a more regimented learning environment.

They’ll stick with your business if they feel like they gain something by working with your company. That means you’ll retain more top talent and get them to keep working alongside you.

Retaining top talent will save you money since you don’t have to hire more people and train them. Doing so will convince them to stick with your company and feel like they contribute to the bigger picture.

Ability To Attract Top Talent

You want to form a remote company culture focused on development and outcomes, so you attract top talent in the field. You want to create a model and style where many people apply to your company, so you can always pick the best out of the applicants.

On top of that, many of the best workers don’t want to remain tied to an office. They recognize the benefits of working with virtual teams, so you’ll make the job more appealing to them as you offer these options to them.

Better Outcomes

Ultimately, you’ll increase the company’s performance when you develop your employees. You’ll increase the results from your team as you teach them new techniques and skills to get them to tackle their responsibilities.

Remember that improving your team also relates to quality. You show them how to do their job quickly while offering the best products and services possible. As you find that balance, you’ll help your business gain employees that focus on outcomes over actions.

What Are the Challenges of Developing Talent in a Remote Team?

While you should develop talent, you’ll naturally face difficulties as you try to work with a remote team. That means you must recognize those challenges, so you’ll know how to work around them and focus on development.

Hard To Stay Connected and Engaged With Your Team Members

Employees need you to work with them and feel connected to your business. If they don’t feel like they can talk and communicate, they’ll struggle, which could profoundly impact employee well-being in your business since they can’t work as effectively with others.

Because of that, you may struggle to talk with them as soon as necessary unless you establish the proper communication channels. To overcome this aspect, you must work with your leaders and train them to establish that communication.

Now, many managers will attribute this issue to being remote or that it’s harder when working remote. The data disagrees with that. From my experience, this disconnect and lack of employee engagement exists in nearly equal levels when looking at fully remote teams and those with people in the office every day.

It’s simply that you see the impact more profoundly and sooner in fully remote teams. Managers and executives assume that because someone is sitting in a cube or in their office that they are engaged and operating at a top level….but that simply is not true. If anything, I appreciate how fully remote teams force leaders to level up and help their teams before there are profound issues.

More Difficult To Build Strong Relationships

Since they cannot spend time together in an office, they may struggle to build relationships with their other team members. Building lasting relationships allows them to work together effectively while utilizing the best skills they offer to support others on the team.

If they can’t form strong relationships, they may struggle to understand why they should stick with your business. However, they can still develop those strong relationships if they have a good manager or stellar operations team that knows how to work with a remote team.

Struggle With Accountability

Many managers believe that since you can’t hold them responsible at the office, you must trust they’ll complete their assignments. That means if they don’t do their work, you may not know until it becomes a problem.

While modern collaboration and analytics tools solve this regardless of where a the employee is, many managers simply do not have the experience using them.

Without that training or experience, they will need to find ways to check on their staff so they can track the entire process and make sure people are doing their job.

Lack of Collaboration

Your employees may find it challenging to work together as they start with a remote team. That means if they have to work with someone in the group, they may struggle to complete the assignment and find a time to work together due to varying schedules and time zones.

Some will find it hard to collaborate compared to working with someone in an office environment. The situation can cause miscommunication and drop the quality of the work if the employees don’t develop their talents and work together.

Lack of Feedback

The development process involves giving feedback to your team members. However, providing direct feedback can be tricky, even if the manager sends messages. Some feedback works better when you can show rather than tell, making virtual feedback difficult, and for some reason, many people are reluctant to simply share their screens until that is becomes team culture.

Since your business must develop a feedback culture, you should work with your managers to find an efficient way to provide feedback. Doing so will help them become more effective since they’ll know what to change if they want to offer better products and services.

Lack of Structure

If a remote team doesn’t have structure, it could struggle and face severe problems sooner than the same team in an office. Managers may run into more problems trying to create structure for a virtual team, especially as they have to complete different projects with time constraints.

I find weaker team leads benefit from their teams figuring this out themselves when sitting in pods or sharing offices. They self-organize and bring their own leadership, and this does not always happen with remote teams, especially if the teams lack senior people on the team.

Some may even find it challenging to do their basic and daily tasks if they don’t have structure. Instead of having them guess, ensure you work with your managers to develop a system before any issues arise.

Lack of Trust

When you run a team, you have to focus on building trust between the members. However, if people can’t meet each other in-person, they may struggle to develop that trust. Sometimes people feel they find it difficult to trust people if they can’t see or work with them directly.

While I’ve seen that you can build trust faster and strong on remote teams, without being intentional with that focus on trust early on and as you add new people to the team, it will not happen.

On top of that, you’ll have people with various personalities and differences in the group, making it harder to develop that trust. You’ll need someone who knows how to work with these groups and bring them together to bridge that trust through a team building activity or team meetings.

How To Develop Talent in Remote Teams

If you want to develop talent in remote teams, you must remember some crucial points. You need to guide your remote teams while providing them with the necessary tools to improve.

Start By Hiring the Right People for the Team You’re Building

You want to think about your business and hire the right people for it. For example, if your business builds itself on customer trust, hire people with real experience in customer service. Ensure you remember them and focus on your interactions with the people you’ve added to your team and the outcomes you want them to help with.

Focus on people with the necessary skills and a desire to develop their skills. Look for traits that you’ll see in actions and how people “show up” (a Birkman term). For example, I look for people that have a bias towards, understand healthy conflict, and are open to doing things differently than how they have in the past.

Equip Teams With the Best Technologies and Tools Available

If you plan to have your team improve, you have to provide them with the right tools and technology. The necessary tools will vary depending on the team and business, but focus on what they need while making it easier for them to collaborate.

Real-time chat platforms like Slack or Discord are a must, but you want to look at other categories of tools such as project management tools (e.g. Asana, Trello, Shortcut) and employee engagement platforms (e.g. Lattice, 15Five, Motivac, Hey Taco, etc.). Ensure you look through the most popular tools and technology since businesses use them to utilize their versatility and overall strength.

Celebrate Wins and Learn From Losses

Encourage your team to mention their successes and “catch people doing what is right”. Doing so will allow them to see their progress while providing tips to help others progress. Not only does it help them, but it can increase morale and help your team perform better.

Since losses and mistakes will occur, don’t criticize your team members for these moments. Instead, emphasize what they can learn from the experience so they understand how to develop, improve, and learn from mistakes.

Look for areas where your teams may continue to stumble and send a leader in to work with them and coaching them in real time. I like to point out that sometimes the team needs you to get into the trench with a shovel and teach them to dig the trench by doing it alongside of them and letting them see how you do it.

Instill a Sense of Purpose

If you want them to stick with their work and perform well, you must let them know their work matters. When you focus on purpose, you motivate your remote teams while reassuring them of their work.

Leaders must act accordingly and remind employees of their purpose.

I find that the vast majority of people do not know their personal purpose – the “why” they work and what they hope to see accomplished from their participation in the world. As a leadership team, one of your roles is to help each person identify their own purpose and then help them connect how their purpose connects to the company’s purpose and desired outcomes.

You should also explain what the company wants to accomplish so the team knows where to aim their efforts. As you bring them together, you’ll help them remain strong and work hard.

Provide a Clear Path for Advancement and Development

Team members want to stick with a group if they can improve and receive career advice. Ensure you give them those opportunities and let them know how they can make their way up the chain so they focus their efforts on those aspects.

This does not always mean giving them promotions or putting them in charge of managing others. Some people do not want to manage others and some people simply are not good at it, even with training. That doesn’t mean that they cannot provide leadership and mentorship to others. Others simply want to advance in tackling new challenges. Understanding what each individual on your team is looking for in their career path is the first step.

Focus on helping them improve, even if you can’t provide new jobs to them today. Encourage your managers to schedule time to talk with employees individually, so they can work with them and make those adjustments.

Increase Recognition and Reward Accomplishments

Even though remote team members don’t spend time around the rest of the team or each other, you can still recognize their work. Go out of your way to congratulate people when they perform well. You can do so through a message, video call, or other circumstances.

You can even give various rewards, such as providing them with a bonus or access to online courses. As you keep recognizing their efforts and providing rewards, you’ll make them want to work harder and do their best.

Remember that not everyone perceives recognition in the same way as you. I’ve found great success in having my teams take 1) the Birkman Assessment and 2) this appreciation survey to identify how they want to be shown appreciation.

Acknowledge Specific Actions That Demonstrate Culture Traits

You’ll want to develop a culture for your business, so emphasize when people demonstrate those cultural traits. For example, if you emphasize going the extra mile and working harder, you can point out when your employees accomplish that.

As you emphasize those actions and show how your employees perform well, you demonstrate to the other team members what they should do. They then know to apply those ideas to their work, so they’ll develop and help the team.

One of my favorite tools for remote teams was Disco’s tool Kudos. It allowed you to publicly acknowledge teammates in any Slack channel and you (or someone else) could then tie that “kudos” to a specific company value (e.g. bias towards action). I loved this tool and this company but unfortunately, it was shut down. There are other standalone tools that are similar such as Motivac and Hey Taco that are great as well.

I’m personally switching larger teams over to a more established employee engagement tool like Lattice or 15Five to be able to share OKRs and help coach other leaders on how to best develop their team with productive 1:1s.

Encourage Innovation

Employees shouldn’t feel afraid to suggest new ideas and focus on innovation. When you encourage them to innovate and develop new ideas, they can bring those ideas forward and help the business improve.

Since employees can end up in a routine when they work in a remote environment, you want to talk about the importance of trying new ideas. You should also consider rewarding people when their innovations make a difference.

Try to create a messaging group where people can share ideas and come up with new approaches to their work. I also try to allow people to carve out time to chase down their ideas, research the pros and cons, and then bring those back to the team to consider. When possible, I like to allow people to try experiments to see if their idea is better than the way we have been doing it. Controlled risk is the name of the game for giving this flexibility.

Put a Senior Leader, Not in HR, Responsible for Remote Culture

Since some people don’t trust HR (sorry, but it is true), you’ll want to pick someone else for the position. See if you can get a COO involved with remote culture and positivity among the employees. Have them go out of their way to interact with remote workers and collect feedback.

As they collect feedback, they can identify what works in a team and strengthen everyone. Most of the time, the best concepts come from those who know how to work with others. Pick someone who can listen and apply what others say, so they’ll improve the remote work culture.

I’ve found that regardless of the title I hold and sometimes even as a Board member that I end up getting tasked with this role. I frequently hear “culture follows Kurt”, which while I like to hear it, it’s only because of the great mentors that I’ve had and that I always identify individual contributors to step into the actual implementation of the culture and any platforms the company’s roll out.

Getting Started Today

Developing your remote team will lead your business to success as you get more of them to do what you expect them to accomplish. Ensure you spend some time reviewing your individual teams, figuring out how to develop each member, and getting them to succeed.

You can get in touch with me to receive further details and answers. That way, you can focus on your remote employees and do what you can to unify your remote workforce.

FAQs

As you go through the process, you may have questions about the situation. However, if you spend some time diving into the frequently asked questions (FAQs), you can receive more information on the problem to help you with the development process.

How do you scale your business by developing a remote team?

To scale your business, you must scale your remote team. The process involves giving remote employees the tools they need to work effectively and allowing them the flexibility to take advantage of the benefits to the team of remote work. As you put more money and effort into them, they’ll naturally help your business grow and improve.

How do executives and other leaders develop talent in their teams?

Executives and leaders must offer training to develop their employees, and this often comes with more time mentoring individuals. When they train and work alongside their employees, they provide the necessary knowledge and resources to help them succeed.

Executives who don’t directly interact with the teams can provide the training to the managers, who’ll then pass the message.

How can your business manage its remote teams?

Successfully managing employees and a remote team comes down to communication and the right technology, which stands out as the biggest challenge. If you can adequately share details and have them understand the necessary procedures, they’ll go through them correctly.

You should also emphasize the importance of outcomes to help your team with management. Make sure everyone is bought in on the purpose and desired outcomes and the timelines will take care of themselves.

How do you make remote employees feel connected?

You can develop a human connection with your employees by having a channel they can use to talk about non-work topics. We have channels for #pets, #random, #watercooler (we use an app to prompt questions), #unofficial-bookclub, etc. On top of messaging each other through Slack, Discord, or similar messaging services, you should have regular video calls to make everyone feel connected and part of the team.

One of my teammates and I also host a weekly social hour and every few months we make it a special one (e.g. virtual petting zoo, murder mystery, etc.)

How can you develop good teamwork when working remotely?

Developing good teamwork while working remotely comes down to excellent communication (I err on the side of overcommunication) and organization. If you want them to work well together, you should focus on easy communication.

You should also keep them organized and provide the necessary tools for them to succeed. For example, you can give them project management software to keep track of their work details.