How to Manage A Remote Team
7 challenges & 7 best practices
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You may be planning to bring on remote writers for your business or maybe you’ve recently been promoted to management at the company you work for.
Either way, being a manager is a specific set of skills.
These include fantastic communication and collaboration skills, the ability to manage without smothering, being extremely organized and detail-oriented, being able to clearly set and verbalize deadlines, conflict resolution, and more.
Not everyone wants to manage others; some prefer to just do their work and be done. Others simply enjoy what they do currently and have no desire to move. And others have their own reasons.
Then there are those who want to manage others.
Whether you are managing a team for an employer or managing your own team for your business, there are a few things you can do to make managing remote workers easier.
I recently wrote about my own management journey and going from a coach-player (managing people while also doing the work alongside your people) to a coach only for the first time (no longer doing the daily tasks and managing others full-time). I even designed my own “manager training” to learn and be prepared.
Technology & Tools
Having the right tech in place is absolutely imperative. The right tools foster communication and collaboration, provide accountability, and allow team members to truly feel like part of a team.
I primarily use Slack and Zoom to stay connected with my people, plus Google calendar to see each other’s calendars and set meetings.
Slack is great because most people are relatively familiar with it, and even if they aren’t, using Slack is very easy. It also has a number of integrations that make it work with any other tools you use.
Zoom, Skype, Hangouts, whatever. A video calling platform is a must.
