Keys to managing a successful distributed team

What challenges do distributed teams face?

Poor communication

Disconnection from the team

No sense of belonging

Loneliness

Lack of trust

Boredom

Unmotivated team

Wait!

@ChrisHardie - Automattic

Ricaris: 100% distributed team

• 25 countries

• Working around the clock

HR in numbers

• 67% of current team members and team leaders have been in the company for 5 years.

• We have meet in person only 7 out of 228 employees.

• Team travel budget in 6 years: 480€ total.

How do we do it?

1-Recruiting

• Not everybody can work remotely.

– Be autonomous by nature

– Have a certain degree of self-motivation

– Be a good communicator, at least in writing

– Share or relate to the company’s vision and values

• Set clear expectations

2-Company Culture

IMPLEMENT Company Culture: New hire tunnel

1. “Good vibes” handbook: • Clear expectations

• Ground rules

• Break paradigms - multicultural team

2. We care. Speed courses.

3. Daily mentoring during the first 2 weeks.

All procedures must be well documented and available.

Company culture

KEEP Company Culture

•Repetition with creativity

• Team Leaders set example:

– Value alignment

– Close accompaniment

– Assertive feedback

Company culture

Keep Distributed Teams Healthy

• Active listening

• Knowledge of the team and their aspirations:

– Personality tests

– Team activities

• Trust

Company culture

Keep Distributed Teams Healthy

• Weekly feedback: 43% of highly engaged employees receive weekly feedback*

• Real empowerment and support

• Show warmth

• Identification with company values

• Repeat why each person’s work is important

• Involve team in goal settings

*Towers Watson 2012

Company culture

Keeping Motivation: MonthlyCongress

1. Intro: Fun ice-breaker or personal info sharing

2. Into the circle: share company and team information

3. Course or development activity/Bonding and Belonging

4. Fun activity

Company culture

Ice-Breakers

Two truths and a tale:

• Objective: Fun, increases trust.

• Each person must make three statements about him/herself, one of which isn't true.

• Example: I have two brothers, I was born in Australia, and I have a motorcycle.

• The group must guess or vote on which statement is the tale.

• Tip: Use a whiteboard to keep track of who is best at deceiving the others. He/she is the winner and probably the one with the craziest life!

Group connections:

• Objective: Fun, increases trust and knowledge between team members, reflection on communication and asking questions.

• Team members have 2 minutes to discover an interesting, surprising, and separate connection you share with each person in your team.

• Share your discoveries with the rest of the group.

• Follow with a discussion about what kinds of questions were made, how many, etc. until a connection was reached.

Company Culture

Ice-BreakersSharing wisdom

• Objective: Increases trust and knowledge.

• The assignment for members to look back over their work careers and determine the 2 most important pieces of wisdom they have learned and share them with the group.

• The topics can be different ones like things they have learned working in a team, working with different managers, etc.

• Follow with a discussion where you guide the team into talking about how they felt before, during, and after the moment and how they feel about it now that they have acquired that knowledge.

• Tip: If the team is too large, make teams of 4, with each group having different levels of knowledge.

• Ask people to prepare the activity a couple of days before the meeting

Company culture

COMMUNICATION CHALLENGES

Motivation Killer

Communication challenges

Always use video

80% of the message we receive comes from body language

Communication challenges

• Make communications warm

• Get personal

• Regular feedback

• Team Leaders always available

• Document everything

• Use available tools: whiteboards, screen sharing, task management tools,…

A new way of communicating

Communication challenges

BEATING LONELINESS

Motivation Killer

Beating loneliness

• Promote virtual water coolers

• Break the virtual world:

– Pay for co-working spaces

– Promote and pay for city/regional face-to-face meetings

Beating loneliness

Private social media

Beating loneliness

Team activities

• Do activities to increase identification with company and team:

Beating loneliness

Sense of belongingCreate a mascot

• Spend 5 to 10 minutes brainstorming with your team to generate a list of personality traits and skills that an ideal team member would possess.

• Your list should contain items that would be common for any team, as well as traits unique to your specific team.

• Encourage team members to go beyond the obvious.

• After brainstorming, use the drawing feature of your online collaborative tool to create a team mascot representing your ideal team member.

• It's fun to create your team mascot together in real time, with all team members contributing something to the drawing. Make a stick figure that has all the characteristics in it.

• As a facilitator, you need to make sure that each person’s contribution is represented at least once in the figure.

• Bring the stick figure to an artist (it can be a person in the team) and turn it into a cool-looking mascot. Add the company colors if possible.

• Use it in presentations, and you can even make T-shirts and mugs with it and send them to the team members.

Beating loneliness

Beating boredom

• Promoting participation in transversal projects

• Project related contests

• Possibility to change projects or tasks

• Provide growth

• Activities outside the project

Motivation killer

Motivation drivers:

• Provide development, feedback and empowerment: Gratitude + Why

• Listen to the team:• Use 1:1 meetings to gather information

• Show you care:• Get personal

• Send real gifts

Motivation drivers:

Have fun:• Create playlists together

• Telegram groups

• Photo contest

Coolest graffiti

in your town

Best

moment

in 2014

World Cup

Madness

Specific Tools• Social Media:

– Socialcast.com

– Thoughtfarmer.com

• Project management:– Wrike, Redbooth

– Spotlightppm.com

– blossom.co – Specific for Agile

• Virtual office and virtual water coolers: Sococo.com

• Team activities: Managing-virtual-teams.com

• Measure engagement: Officevibe, Moodapp, Tynipuls

• Know your team: PlayPrelude

• Use white boards, share desktops,… think outside the box!

Managing-Virtual-Teams.com

• Workshops for Managers and Team Members

• Facilitate Team Activities

• 1:1 Consulting

Skype: annadanes

anna.danes@managing-virtual-teams.com