Some weeks ago, we spoke to Ryan, who has been a software dev & architect for 15+ yrs. A striking thing about his work was his leadership style and how he always got the best of both worlds. The two worlds for him, being a hands-on dev while also leading the team, and doing this remotely. He was very proud that he could lead like Star Trek’s Chief O’Brian, but this in no way meant that he didn’t face challenges. From onboarding a new hire to ensuring that the team has a good experienc is a prime responsibility of the leader. Below are some helpful pointers on how to achieve this.
New hire onboarding
(Find a detailed post on this topic here)
To get your team to work well together, the first step is to completely train the members right from the start. Not just from the first day of their work, but from the time they are hired to your firm. Try following a checklist that has all points that are to be taken care of. Such a checklist lists all the things you need to keep in mind, there could of course be differences depending on the way things happen at your company. Try keeping this checklist as a basic framework and making changes as per your requirements. If you are forming a Scrum team, do so with care. It is important to understand the ways in which such teams work and their characteristics when hiring a new member.
Collaboaration practices
(Find a detailed post on this topic here)
Good communication and collaboration practices are vital for remote teams. Work to achieve this dedicatedly and ensure that your team aligns towards the culture. It is necessary that your team has a team oriented mindset. With this, the members will have not only their own, but rather the bigger interest of the team as their priority. Every action that the person takes will then be towards holding true on the goal along with the team and not just at the individual level.
There is no single key though, to great teamwork in any remote team. A combination of a number of factors from the hiring process itself will affect this. Each person’s role, and your expectations about the things they should achieve, should be made clear to them to as to have top notch performance.
So as to make the work interesting for the team and also to get them to work in positions that they are good at, employ some pracAtices such as job rotation or timely feedback and monitoring sessions. This way you will gain an idea of the progress of things in your team and it will also enable you to work on improvements in a well plannes manner. Feedback sessions also work well in ensuring your team works to live and not lives to work.
Employee Happiness
An inept leadership causes lack of motivation, poor performance and a poor work culture among the members. Work towards finding a balance between being a relationship-oriented leader and a task-oriented one. Understand that remote work can overwhel the team as the members are constantly pushing themselves to perform well. Do not be harsh and help them with the best practices to follow.
The members of the team need to be able to get along with eas. Any sort of rivalry between the team is going of affect the ability of the team to work together. Try out some activities that are going to build the trust and cooperation among team members so as to make it a smooth ride. Given the nature of remote work, this will also be help in ensuring that the members have friends and do not live in isolation all the time. A lot of the employees might not be very comfortable with this style of working and can get stressed out. Motivate them to find ways to decompress so as to take care of their health. The team needs to have a fresh mindset to work well.
Do make use of the right tools, too. Check out Hiyaa for interviews, Plutio and [Basecamp](https://www.remote.tools/product/Basecamp) for complete management, and also check out a tool like Atium for better bonding.
