How good are you at leading an overseas team? That is the question facing countless business owners and executives nowadays, with everyone who can do so engaging from home and a few employees hoping to make this a permanent arrangement. But managing remote employees is far difficult than managing those who work from the office. These difficulties can lead to the failure of work-from-home initiatives. As a result, some executives are wary of working remotely. According to distant leadership research, 77 percent of leaders have never managed a remote team in its entirety, and 89 percent have never managed a partially remote team prior to the pandemic.

If you are feeling like you’ve suddenly been thrust into a brand-new world of remote work, you’re not alone. It’s vitally important to make sure you’ve got or can learn the skills it takes to be an adequate remote boss. Prepare to become a far better remote leader with the below-mentioned tips

Communication

When your only interaction with a team member is via phone, text, email, or video chat, you need to have a process in place to use the remote tech tools and achieve the results. There’s a considerably higher chance that you or a team member might misinterpret the information or miss out on crucial information.

Begin by ensuring to schedule regular check-ins and talking through phone or video calls regularly. However, make sure you have a proper agenda and a list to follow up or talk points to chat on, else you might end up spending more time and achieving fewer results. And if you’re in any doubt, work together with your fellow managers or an educator to confirm your communication skills are pretty much as good as can be.

Minutes of the meeting is a great way to capture the action points and to ensure that the team is aware of all the discussion parameters and is on the same page as they do not miss out on executing important tasks.

Organizing

Distribution of work equally depending on the competency of the employees along with periodic check-ins to get updates ensuring the tasks/activities are on track are one of the ways to organize work.

Associating deadlines to tasks and frequent follow-ups via team check-in meetings or via a task management tool such as monday.com, Trello or Slack will ensure that the projects are completed well within the stipulated deadlines.

While meticulous planning is critical, make sure to include buffer time to factor in any ad hoc tasks or urgent issues.

Informality

These times are stressful enough for your employees; try not to add worries about things like dressing professionally or having a pristine workspace within the background during video meetings. So let your team be their whole human selves while working from home. It is a chance to bond with your co-workers and team on a deeper level than you ever could within the office.

Positivity 

Embedding a positive environment and enabling the team with positive thoughts and ideas eventually boosts up the entire morale of the team. A leader’s KPI is to infuse and keep up the same level of passion and energy into the system to ensure productive outcomes.

There are times when you might need to provide feedback to the teammates, hence proper feedback without offending your colleague is of paramount importance. You can conduct one-to-one sessions for delivering detailed feedback.

Appreciating your teammates is another method to bring in some positive vibe to the team. Always try to appreciate while others are present so that the team feels motivated to perform better and gain similar appreciation.

Listening 

This may be the foremost important remote management skill of all because there is an innate desire of each individual to be heard and more so at the company level, where the employees feel more empowered when they are listened to. The sense of satisfaction that their opinions count has a positive impact on their productivity. . Successful entrepreneurs leading remote teams and best-selling author Simon Sinek offer identical advice: From time to time, call your employees on the phone (no email!) and easily ask them how things are going. Then really hear their answers. If they’re struggling, don’t immediately suggest a solution – begin by hearing them out, and after you do, respond; consider what’s best for them also as what’s best for your company.

With all the tips and techniques of remote work management, it is a noted fact that some learnings are via experience and as each day passes, we learn a little more by overcoming new challenges and discovering newer solutions. Same with remote management practices, it is agile learning, that is continually evolving with the way the human workforce and businesses globally are being structured.