As successful entrepreneurs, hiring outside help is inevitable to accomplish our business goals. Delegating tasks and managing a team (especially a virtual one) brings unique challenges and as your business grows, managing becomes much more time consuming as the other demands of your business increase as well. Managing is not for everyone and if you fail to devote time and resources to your employees and/or freelancers, chances are the outcome won’t be pretty. By neglecting your team, you aren’t leveraging it to its fullest potential and even slight issues that aren’t addressed can simmer and worsen over time. Either way, not giving your team some TLC will cost you more in the long run.
How do you get your team to work together and produce results?
1. Set clear expectations. Do people on your team always know who is doing what and by when? If not, as the leader, you’re setting your team up for failure and a lack of accountability can lead to bigger problems down the road like missed deadlines, decreased productivity, lower team morale, and stress. (And who wants to deal with that?!) A task management system is only as good as its users, but it’s a necessity for every virtual team. Here at Digitally Evergreen, we use Asana, but there are a ton of options to choose from. Be sure that for every task, you assign a user and a deadline. Keeping everyone’s tasks in one central location ensures your team is clear on what’s what.
It’s important you take time to plan long term goals for your business. Taking 1-2 days each year to outline your strategic plan and objectives will set you and your team up for success. Otherwise, if you don’t know where you’re going, how will you get there? It’s also worth the time to define attainable, clear and measurable goals with end dates and to share these with your team. That way, everyone is working towards a common goal and can see how their work contributes to the big picture, which improves engagement and productivity.
2. Have an onboarding process. When you hire a new team member, whether they’re a freelancer or employee, it’s important that you have a streamlined process to get them up to speed with your business and save time. While freelancers have more autonomy and legally can’t be treated the same as your employees, it’s still a good idea to provide resources about your business and operations, so they’re able to integrate this knowledge into their service offerings. Documented Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) allows your team to independently find what they need, without you spending valuable time walking through every process. Last, and maybe most importantly, a clear onboarding process allows for a smooth point of entry for the newest member of your team. You want your clients to have a positive experience when they work with you, so why should your employees be any different? An onboarding process shows that you and your team have thought about what a new employee might struggle with and that they aren’t left to sink or swim on their own.
3. Communication is queen. A virtual team will flounder without clear and deliberate communication. Daily, weekly and/or monthly meetings will not only allow for regular check-ins, but also provide more facetime for the team to connect. Don’t make the mistake of winging it at meetings where they become a drawn-out waste of time. Effective meetings have goals, an agenda and documented action items. To prevent email fatigue, but still keep your team in the know, task management platforms allow your team to communicate on an ongoing basis through assigning tasks, accountability, deadlines, providing updates, files and comments. Your commitment to providing (and expecting) effective communication should be a standard for your internal business operations and what you provide to your clients. When in doubt: over-communicate.
4. Employ systems and tools. The digital age provides us boundless, often overwhelming sources of information, but we can wrangle this technology to make it work for us. If there is a manual or repetitive task that you’re spending time on in your business, chances are very good that there’s a program that will do the work for you. Scheduling, invoicing, calendar and email management and more, can all be automated to give you back HOURS each week.
5. Invest in professional development. While you and members of your team are experts in your field, it’s imperative that you don’t let your expertise prevent you from advancing your knowledge. Otherwise, you may miss out on new, innovative ideas and trends. Commit to lifelong learning and encourage your team to do the same. Outline plans for growth with your employees, provide tools and resources to help them reach their goals, and check-in with them during one-on-ones and/or annual reviews. Professional development doesn’t need to be expensive like sending people to trainings, networking events or conferences – although this is a great thing to do. More cost-effective options include Udemy.com, which has affordable courses or you could do free internal trainings, where employees lead the rest of the team in a lesson or exercise focused around an industry topic, concept, tool, or area of expertise on a rotating basis. The more general and open-ended you allow these team trainings to be, the richer the content.
Encourage your team to voice and share ideas, point out insights you may have overlooked, challenge assumptions (especially the boss’), and create teams that don’t look and think like you. Embracing open communication allows for fresh ideas and perspectives and prevents groupthink, which brings me to the next point…
6. Beware of hiring for culture fit. Hiring can be a long and tiresome process. It’s an investment for your business and you want to be sure you’re hiring the best candidate for the job and find someone you can easily work with. If candidates have similar interests and backgrounds with your existing team-even better!
You may employ personality assessments to ensure they’ll nestle nicely into the role and/or compliment your personality type, which is all well and fine, BUT don’t be blinded by bias. We all have bias and we use mental shortcuts to offload some of the mental burden when making decisions. However, it’s important we’re aware of our bias, so we can counter it and structure our hiring process to be fair to all candidates. Otherwise, we may miss out on someone truly wonderful. People who’re different than you will bring new skills, perspective, and ideas. If you’re continuously hiring people who you have a lot in common with and who you perceive to fit your company culture, pretty soon, your culture will be one dimensional and innovation will suffer as a result.
7. Be intentional about company culture. Contrary to what some think, engagement, company culture and remote teams can thrive without a physical headquarters, but as a manager, you need to be intentional. Leadership sets the tone for the rest of the company. Do you have and widely share your purpose, vision, mission and values with the team? Is your team able and empowered to speak to your company’s mission with clients in a way that’s consistent to your brand promises? Spending time defining the company’s culture and non-negotiables will set you up for success and allow you to lead with confidence and clarity.
9. Know your strengths. Managing is not for everyone. It takes time to cultivate the skills required to be an effective manager. Addressing conflict or providing timely feedback can be a daunting task for those who don’t like confrontation or aren’t sure how best to approach these discussions. It’s important to ask for help, develop a level of self-awareness, and to know your strengths. Assistance can come in the form of investing in training or outsourcing the responsibility of team management. As a leader, it’s important to consider the opportunity cost of time spent managing your team and the tradeoffs to do so. If your skills and passions don’t align with managing people, your time is likely going to be better invested elsewhere in your business.
You’ve spent time, money, and resources to hire a great team. Don’t think that because you’re remote, investing in your team’s success is a fool’s errand. Engagement, retention and productivity all contribute to your business’ bottom line, so underestimating the importance of teams and their contributions can be detrimental to your business.
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