Creating Your Personal Guide for Remote Team Collaboration 📕
Conscious leaders can better connect their teams with this one creative idea
One the biggest challenges for remote teams is connection. While working from home or a remote location has huge benefits because team members can focus without distraction, we can miss those connection-inducing activities like coffee breaks, hallway conversations, or happy hours. It’s these spontaneous little interactions that help teams connect. They help us better understand a teammate’s personality and how best to create a productive working relationship with them.
So how can you create this type of shared understanding with your remote team to ensure better collaboration and unity? One brilliant idea is creating a “Guide to Me” handbook to be shared with your team.
When Claire Hughes Johnson joined the online payment processing company Stripe, she needed a way to quickly onboard herself with the rapidly growing team and make her interactions with all of them as seamless, comfortable, and productive as possible. So she did what any product or service creator would do for new users: she wrote a “How to work with Claire” guide that she shared with the entire staff.
Claire outlined how she likes to handle professional development conversations, her preferred communication styles, even her leadership style. The guide almost reads like a mix between a Birkman, Strengths Finder or similar professional assessment and a curriculum vitae.
She even shares how she reads and responds to emails, which ones she wants to receive, and the best way to let her know you don’t expect a response (just put FYI in the subject line). And shares her type of sense of humor, so her team knows they can joke and have fun with her.
If you want an excellent example of conveying the conscious leadership principle of caring about and investing in your team, Claire articulates it this way:
“I care a lot about you, your people, and all of your development. Please make sure we’re touching base on your team, building our teams’ skills as individuals and as teams constantly, and that I know when there are superstars and challenges so we can help people together.”
In the asynchronous communication environment of remote teams, this kind of information is gold. It alleviates the anxiety team members feel with new team mates and leaders. It also strengthens existing relationships because it dispels team-sabotaging thoughts about other’s work styles and communication styles.
Instead of thinking that Robyn in marketing ignores your emails all day, you could read her guide and know she only responds to emails between 6-9am ET every weekday. She’s not ignoring you; she’s following the systems she created to make her more productive. Her guide might say that if you need an immediate response, send her a What’s App message. This increases goodwill among teams while also respecting each person has a unique work and communication style.
So what would your user manual say about you? What kind of information would you most want others to know about you? How would this type of practice increase collaboration and connection for your remote team? I’d love to hear your thoughts and how this practice could transform how your team works together.
Work happy. Live happy. Be happy.
Meredith
I will soon be launching a training series for employers and employees to hone their remote work skills and bring more conscious leadership to work. Stay posted for these exciting and timely new courses!
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