How to build up your remote team successfully

I had zero to no experience of team leading when I became a Project Manager. In just 4 months we started growing up together, showing better results and raising the bar when it came to the services we’re offering.

I started my journey as a Project Manager(PM) more than 6 months ago and had no previous experience as a team lead. I didn’t really have any idea how to do things in practice even though I’ve read many articles and books. In my previous places, I’ve always been part of a team, not leading it, even though I felt it come naturally to my persona.

For the past half a year I’ve learned so much, got to know behaviors, mechanisms to cope with stress, and put my team always in the first place. No matter what was happening my one and only leading thought was that we can do whatever project comes our way, but first and foremost I was working with human beings and I need to take into consideration how they are feeling and how they want to develop their career and help them out as much as I can.

Why? I’ve experienced multiple times the disappointment when someone puts first the work and then the human being. Yes, that taught me a lot in many ways, but I will never forget how miserable I felt because one of my team leads expressed little to no interest in how I was feeling but at the same time was teaching clients that they should pay more attention to their employees.

However, there will always be such examples and that’s what should motivate you to be better. Let’s get back to my PM experience – to make things even harder, I had to gather my team which was remote and I’ve never seen them so far due to precautions measures.

In the beginning, it was pure chaos but I’m proud to say that with my team’s help we managed to develop processes, team structure, and the most important thing – to feel like a real team and to start to get one another.

Here is the secret – I used the help of my team trying different techniques and talking together whether they are working or not.

First, I started with what exactly is project management. So far I knew nothing about it but experience it as a side viewer. I researched how did proceed with the tech companies I knew. What was outstanding from their methodology and was it applicable for my case. I observed the practices my friends told me about that they like about their current team and what was the current situation my team was experiencing. I did write in Google “successful project management” but the results I got didn’t exactly help me out, so browsed through the blog pages of companies like Slack, Jira, Teamwork, Hubspot (yes, that’s right, due to the pandemic, they’ve launched new sub-category in their blog – Remote work).

After I got to understand inside-out what project management was, I continued with what I’ve known so far – the Agile methodology. I got to read more about it and bookmark the things that I thought were applicable for our situation. One of my main aims was to have a clear overview of the team’s availability without micro-managing. The way I thought I will have that was by implementing weekly plannings and daily stand-ups with turned-on cameras. After 6 weeks of trying with the stand-ups and the weekly planning, the first feedback from every team member was that they were feeling finally part of the team, had an overview of what the others were doing, and felt nice seeing one another.

I already had some knowledge but it needed validation from successful case studies or articles. One of those was an article published on Slack’s blog section – Effective project management: the gift that keeps on giving. The article confirmed my chosen action points. And to be more precise:

1. You need to be the initiator of processes and plannings, to know your team’s strongest and weakest sides and to help them learn to plan successfully and accordingly to the constant workflow that we already had.
2. Give them constructive feedback that will help them understand the situation better and know whether they did plan their actions in the best way possible according to the processes set.
3. Oversee their work using the daily stand-ups and give prompt feedback. Do not micromanage and follow their every step, making them feel uncomfortable.
4. Do the postmortem – oversee together the whole project, give each other feedback and analyze whether the actions taken during the project timeline were accurate and what could be done better.

Besides the project management activities, I introduced to the team regular one on ones to talk about their work, how do they see themselves and how do they want to develop professionally. As I said at the beginning of the article, I was looking forward to helping them out do their work and achieve their aims.

We started having web coffee dates before work and talk about non-work-related stuff. Naturally occurred to stay after our Friday stand-up and talk about weekend plans, things that we liked, etc. At some point – when the weather was warmer, we even met in person to grab drinks and have fun.

Anyhow, there are a lot of articles that can help you out but you need to filter them by your needs and at what pace your team is moving. Are they shy or introverted? Or maybe they bring past luggage that scarred them for life and now you have to prove to them that there could be healthy relationships in the team? Or they are open to new experiences and people and are ready to challenge themselves?

You’re wondering how to take it? Always easy. In the beginning.

Quite often we need to be flexible and think about the best tactic possible for new teammates or integrating current ones into the team. Even before the pandemic started, people were quite afraid to break the ice and talk to each other. Now it’s even harder. And I speak from personal experience. For the past year I’ve lost half of my communication abilities and comfort to be myself outside my comfort zone. I am consciously avoiding acquaintances, relatives, and big meetings. So the analytical creature that I am, I started researching ways of breaking the ice not only with friends and family but inside the team as well.

One of the more creative articles was published on Atlassian’s blog, called – 7 icebreaker games to help your team build authentic connections. You know, when an article has 7 out of the 5 words you were looking for, it might be something. But as they pointed out at the end of the article, it’s important to know your team and to take it easy in the beginning, showing them that even though you’re all working remotely, it’s an amazing opportunity to build up an extraordinary team that will be there for them always.

One of my favorite people who laid the foundation of my team knowledge is Simon Sinek. A true linchpin who has shown me that you should always fight for your team, put it in the first place and help them grow both professionally and personally.

“A leader’s job is not to do the work for others, it’s to help others figure out how to do it themselves, to get things done, and to succeed beyond what they thought possible.”

That’s one of the quotes and insights that keep me going, that validates my belief that you grow when you help people grow. You learn by getting into situations you’ve never quite imagined and think about solutions that’s aim is to help and not create more problems.

At its core, project management is more than just getting a job done. The job will always get done, no matter, delays, achievements, failures, or successes. Project management is about helping people figure out what path they need to take to up-skill themselves and feel happy at the end of the day, even if the job is shitty or not. The team’s attitude, teammates support is what keeps the team going. The obstacles are inevitable but if the team is cohesive, nothing can stop it.