The recent pandemic has changed the way we work. Many employers and employees are moving from a purely physical setting to a hybrid remote setup.

While this is beneficial to both parties, managing remote teams poses a new form of challenge. Even if you’ve been managing teams for a while, keeping people you can only see virtually on track and in line may be challenging.

Koen Vanpraet is a business leader, client advocate, and seasoned coach for team management who has decided to share the secrets for leading remote teams in 2022. Let’s get started!

Hold check-ins and standup meetings daily.

Generally, physical meetings are held to keep teams on track and united on the business at hand in an office. The same logic goes for remote teams.

Since supervising every action will be impossible, standup meetings are necessary to keep in sync and ensure efficiency. If you’re holding periodic check-ins, make sure you prepare adequately for them and get the information you need before you prepare for the meeting.

You can incorporate weekly recaps into your standup meetings to have your team members know about everything each of them has achieved, struggled with, or will need moving forward.

Create, track and achieve your goals with a proven method

According to Koen Vanpraet, most remote teams suffer from poor communication. Without a suitable dissemination method, it’s easy to leave an important task that may prevent the team members from reaching their goals. It’s even possible that team members may know nothing about these vital tasks.

The simple solution to this problem is to track your team’s progress without micromanaging. You can do this by collecting their schedules, identifying their tasks, and noting down the date they have committed to completing such tasks.

By doing this, your team will have clarity in their tasks, how they should do it and who’s handling the job along with them if it needs a joint effort.

Koen Vanpraet also recommends that managers learn the art of leading people constantly. One way to do it is to read books to influence your leadership style.

Tell them your expectations clearly.

For Koen Vanpraet, communication is one of the most important things in any work setting, especially when you need to work with your co-workers to do a project. It’s even more critical in a remote work setting when you can’t just walk up to any co-worker and ask a quick question.

This means that expectations must be communicated appropriately, upfront, and regularly to keep the team going.

You can do this by developing policies and processes for different things and matters. For example, you should determine how many hours of work each team member will put in and when they’re going to be available.

Channels of communication and how to go about it should be predetermined, and details around standing or recurring meetings should be properly clarified.

Now that we’ve mentioned some of the secrets for leading remote teams we learned from, it’s time for you to put them in place and see how effective your team becomes.