How To Lead Remote Teams Effectively

The steady march towards working from home and remote teams was sped up drastically by the COVID-19 pandemic. For instance, a survey conducted by IBM recently found that more than half of employees want remote work to be their primary method of working, and 75 percent said they’d like the option to continue working remotely at least some of the time. And many companies are responding in kind.

So, it seems like a fair prediction that, as a leader, you will likely be asked to lead a remote team at some point in the future-if you’re not already. Whether that team is fully remote or “free range” meaning they come into the office every once in a while, geographically dispersed teams present a unique set of opportunities and challenges. In this article, we will consider three elements of remote team leadership that will help you manage the risks and see more rewards from remote work: shared expectations, shared empathy, and shared vision.

Shared Expectations

The first thing you’re going to need as a leader of a remote team is to make sure the team develops shared expectations. There are new rules to remote work, and everyone is finding out what works for them, what their communications preferences are, and how they’ll balance work and life. There’s no water cooler for chit chat and no one is checking their cubicle to see…