Managing a remote team presents a clear challenge. While remote working often attracts independent types, there is a risk of isolation. Simon Hayward, CEO Academee takes a look at the issues and offers some advice.

A remote team, where team members are geographically dispersed rather than located in one place, presents tremendous opportunities for flexibility, innovation, customer focus and cost reductions. For all these reasons, remote working is becoming increasingly popular.

However, alongside the benefits of remote working are the challenges of managing and motivating a team who are not working together regularly in the same office. Common remote working issues include dealing with isolation, maintaining or losing trust, communication, misunderstanding and suspicion. The success of remote teams largely depends on the ability of managers to lead them.

Remote working often appeals to people who are very individual and enjoy managing their own workload. How can a manager motivate these people to work successfully with fellow team members to achieve shared goals?

Isolation
Managers need to explore the situation of the remote worker who does not have regular formal or informal contact with his or her peer group or manager. This situation may create opportunities for misunderstanding, for feelings that others are being treated more favourably, for feelings of exclusion and for feelings of isolation.

Managers therefore have to work hard to offer continual reassurance. They have to both be fair and be seen to be fair and they have to communicate, communicate and communicate some more. They also have to be aware that remote workers will develop individualism and self-dependence and may therefore be more challenging to manage.

Cliques may also develop as remote workers located within close proximity turn to each other rather than to the manager at the organisational centre. With careful management, this can add to the strength of the overall team. However, if the manager loses control, the cliques go their own way and reduce the overall effectiveness of the team.

Case study
Managing remote teams is a key challenge for Finning (UK), the national Caterpillar dealer for Great Britain and a division of Finning International Inc. one of the world’s largest distributors of heavy equipment. Stuart Chapman, Finning’s Compensation and Benefits Manager, explains his experience of meeting this challenge in his previous role of Training and Development Manager: “Describing the challenges of managing remote teams is one thing, but equipping managers with the skills is quite another. With over 1000 remote based sales and service personnel, effective remote management is critical to Finning’s business success and customer service."

Finning commissioned a bespoke programme that included role-play and simulation, to put managers in a comparable remote environment. Learners were split into two teams, and one person from each team was delegated as team leader. The team leaders were then separated from their teams and put into another room and given a task for their team to complete (the teams did not know what the task was, but knew it would be the same). The two remaining teams were sat at either end of a larger room. Instructions from each leader to their team were given through an intermediary. This could be in the form of mock emails or phone messages.

The real power of the programme became apparent on the very first course. At the start of the activity, one of the team leaders chose to spend a few minutes carefully reading the task before sending any communication back to the team. The other team leader looked at the detail of the task and decided to send an 'email' back to the team to say: "It will take me a few minutes before I can give you any instructions, so hold tight."

The impact on the two teams was highly visible. The team with no communication immediately started to become agitated as they could see some form of communication being sent to the other team. They asked questions like: "What have they been told? Why haven't we been told anything?" The team who had received communication was equally distracted by the actions of the other team: "Why are they reacting differently? Have they been told something different?" The team leaders simply could not see the impact of their decisions on their teams. Their intentions were always commendable, but the effects different. The power of the programme was in creating the feelings of being remote, and by being able to discuss as a group the practical impacts decisions had on the teams and the team leaders.

Simple yet powerful learning interventions such as this can have a real impact on awareness and very quickly result in tangible benefits such as improved leadership, communication and team working.

Key points for developing remote team managers:
* Develop an understanding of the impact on managers of working with remote teams and identify appropriate tools and techniques that will help them to be more effective.
* Develop an understanding of the impact of working as a remote team member and identify approaches that can improve the working environment.
* Share experience and identify existing best practice.
* Explore the particular communication challenges associated with managing remote teams and identify appropriate processes that will ensure effective team communication.
* Explore the particular performance management issues associated with managing remote teams and identify appropriate processes that will ensure effective performance improvement.