In this video, JoyPowered® author/podcast host JoDee Curtis shares her advice for leading teams, especially when your team works remotely. Whether your team is remote or live, it’s important to be an intentional leader.

Video transcript:

Hello, I’m JoDee Curtis, co-host of The JoyPowered® Podcast, and I’m here today to share some tips with you around leading remote teams. At least, that was my original plan, but I kept asking myself, is there really a difference between being an effective leader for a remote team versus a live team? I suspect most of us have way more experience in leading live teams than we do remote teams, but that just means we need to be more intentional about it, right? But don’t we need to be intentional either way? I think this might be a good wake up call to remind us to be more intentional leaders regardless of the makeup of our teams.

For years, Gallup has studied the impact that managers have on employee engagement for their teams, and it’s a startling 70%. We as managers and leaders have a 70% impact on the employee engagement of our team members. I think what that tells me is that we need to think about pointing our fingers inward at ourselves as leaders, instead of pointing our fingers and blaming our team members. As we think about their engagement, their motivation, their productivity, let’s point our fingers inward and ask ourselves what we are doing to be better leaders. I have five reminders to help you to be more intentional.

Number one, set clear goals and expectations. This helps us to create trust on both sides of the relationship, and it’s so much easier to delegate, to resolve conflicts, and to provide performance feedback, what I like to call “feed forward,” when we are all on the same page from the very beginning and keep everyone on the same page around deliverables, roles, projects, and timelines.

Reminder number two, communicate often and intentionally. If you think you’re over communicating, you’re probably not. Help them stay connected, not just to you, but to the overall organization’s strategies and values, and find out how do your team members want to be communicated with and do your best to provide that. Make sure to include some face-to-face time, though, so you can do a status check on their facial expressions and their body language. Ask them specifically, what’s working? What’s not? What are their strengths? Are they able to use them?

Tip number three: celebrate wins, both personally and professionally. Allow team members time to share their successes at the beginning of the meeting, or on a Slack channel, whatever works for your team, and celebrate those by sending notes, cards, creating a virtual or live happy hours, or sending them a gift card. Recognize them like they want to be recognized. Not sure what that is? Ask them.

Step number four: problem solve together. I think many leaders struggle as they think they have to have all the answers. Are your team members concerned about a particular client? A project? Technology? Brainstorm with them a number of ideas and involve other team members when appropriate. Research says that most adults use less than 10% of their creativity on a given day, so stretch yourself on this one and ask how can we solve this problem together?

Number five, look for the joy in your work your workspace and your team. We have to choose joy daily and ask not what is wrong with people, but what is right with them. And also ask that about yourself and encourage team members to do the same.

You want more ideas on how to be a more effective leader? Check out our JoyPowered® Workspace Podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts, or you can go directly to getjoypowered.com/podcast. Thanks, and make it a JoyPowered® day, every day.