Three Tips To Turn Remote Individuals Into A Team

When teams go from being co-located to dispersed, they can start acting like a bunch of individuals, rather than a team. Because they're working in isolation, it's very easy for the teams to focus on their individual goals and aspirations, and stop collaborating.

Recently, I was talking to a leader - a team leader - at a transport firm about her team and how they were going. They'd been working remotely for some time, and I could tell that she wasn't that happy with how it was. And I sort of tried to dig in and find out what it was.

“Is it their productivity?”
”No, no, no.”

“Is it the way they are, with you?”

“No, no, that's all fine.”

She said -"You know what? I just want them to start being like a team again."

That's not an uncommon situation.

You might have noticed that over time as your team is in disparate locations, they stop acting like a team and instead act like a bunch of individuals.
What can you do to get them to act as a team again?

Well, I have three suggestions.

The first one is you create a buddy system. So you get two of your team members to buddy up with each other. You can you can do that randomly. And they have an agreement to check in with each other a few times a week and see how they're going and help each other as best they can. Best to set the buddy system the first time, and not leave it up to them, but over time, that can evolve and you can swap them around.

The second one is to make sure that you maintain social time, that you meet at least once a week (not to talk about work) as a whole team. You meet once a week as a team and the rule is no talking about work, talk about social things, play some games you can find online.

And the third one is specifically for you. Next time you're talking to your team, one of your team members, or pretty much most times, do a little checking to see how they are. Just a little personal check in,
which is not about work. How are they going? What's going on for them? And all you have to do is listen to what they say. You have to validate their experience, you don't have to do anything else with it.

If you want to create a team with maximum productivity and minimum effort, get in touch or follow me on LinkedIn for more tips.

Watch the video version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/vH7beRluXK0