Building a High-performance Remote Team

Building a high-performance remote team is a complex undertaking. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.
The common conception is that building a high-performance remote team is more challenging. But should it be?
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As more and more companies look for ways to reduce costs while improving their services, they are increasingly turning to distributed teams of workers who work remotely rather than in central offices.

Distributed teams provide some significant advantages over traditional office settings: cost savings in real estate and other expenses, reduced commuting times for workers who may need to commute far distances to the office, more productivity, and many more benefits.

Remote work is certainly not a panacea to cure all ills. However, it is a working model that is irrefutably here to stay.

My aim here is not merely to tout the benefits of remote work but rather to paint a picture of what it looks like to build a high-performance team that works seamlessly - remotely.

I will approach this with 3 different elements: Trust, Clear Objectives, and Isolation.

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Trust

It is hard enough to build trust and rapport in person and every bit as hard with a remote team.

Every team, remote and collocated, goes through the stages of development. These stages have been outlined by many frameworks over the years. However, a long-standing framework was coined by Bruce W. Tuckman in the 60s. He outlines the Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing stages of team formation.

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In her MIT article, Judith Stein states, "Each stage of team development has its own recognizable feelings and behaviors; understanding why things are happening in certain ways on your team can be an important part of the self-evaluation process."

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I agree with Judith's assessment and would like to add that trust is necessary for a team to progress through the stages and achieve healthy performance. The team has to trust one another, trust leadership, and trust the process. A team equipped to do good work and authorized to execute in a much better position to do just that.

Put briefly, the team needs to know they are trusted to do their best work.
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Steve Jobs famously said, "It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do. We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do."
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The Jobs quote has been polarizing for many and has drawn the ire of critics. I believe that the heart of this is speaking to hiring smart people and making sure that they are equipped to do their best work - without a mountain of bureaucracy and red tape to impede them.

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A remote team needs this flexibility and autonomy, as there is no cubicle to walk over to for help with a critical decision.

This brings me to something I observed during the reLead Summit.

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Hotel staff are called Ambassadors - something the team embodies really well. As a Citizen visiting, I felt welcomed by the ambassadors - starting from the check-in experience to the interactions with them. 

It was interesting to learn that the CitizenM Ambassadors are equipped to make decisions that enrich the lives of guests and even members of the communities where they operate. 

Nothing buttresses this point more than how the CitizenM ambassadors reacted to a curbside car accident.
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On the second day of our Summit, a car caught on fire beside the hotel curb. The distraught owner of the vehicle came in to sit down in the lobby while firefighters got it under control. 

Hotel ambassadors approached her and offered to give her what she needed. She asked for wine, and that was provided courtesy of the hotel. This was pretty remarkable to watch. No calls or escalation to a manager. They were trusted and equipped to make necessary decisions for the betterment of the hotel and the community. In short, they were prepared and authorized to make essential decisions without escalating up the chain of command.

This is something that companies can learn from, especially remote companies. 

This brings me to the very next point.

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Clear Objectives

Again, taking from the citizenM example tendered above, Ambassadors have a pretty clear understanding of the citizenM mission to make decisions that better the lives of the citizens who come to visit and those in the communities they operate.

To build a high-performance team, team members must understand the mission and why they are working towards the objectives.

Simon Sinek put this beautifully when he said, "People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe."

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Isolation

Remote work is here to stay, but it can be a lonely journey. It is easy to join remote work groups online and find key collaborators, but building solid relationships and friendships can be tricky over a screen. 

The likes of RemotelyOne help create a much-needed community for remote work professionals to collaborate, network, and meet for IRL events. This goes a long way to keep people plugged in and help mitigate the effects of isolation.

It was quite an experience at the RemotelyOne reLead Summit hosted at citizenM Hotels in D.C. Remarkably, before this event, a bunch of us had never met in person. However, the camaraderie facilitated by RemotelyOne translated very well from digital to analog. 

It felt like being among old friends.

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With the meteoric increase in the number of companies offering remote work and many people being thrust into this new way of working, there is a greater dependence on asynchronous communication and meeting software. This raises a challenge as many nuances and body language cues are lost.

This Metro UK publication paints a picture of this when it is said that "The context we'd usually get from body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice is missing when we communicate via instant messages. This can leave certain communications to interpretation, causing anxiety and failing to allow colleagues to bond naturally."
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It is very sobering when you combine that with the findings from a study that indicates that prolonged isolation and loneliness are compared to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

With that in mind, spaces like CitizenM are bastions to facilitate serendipitous connections for remote workers and create opportunities for Digital Nomads to do their best work in a space designed for them.

The mycitizenM+ membership is an innovative solution to provide a much-needed space for digital nomads and just makes sense.

In conclusion, connecting with other remote work advocates and experts was such a blast.

Most of us had never met in person before the Summit, yet, thanks to the collaboration between RemotelyOne and CitizenM to host us in a space that facilitated our connection, we got to know and learn from one another. For many of us, it marks the start of lifelong friendships and collaborations.

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