Pod Insights The $100 MBA Show MBA2564 Q&A Wednesday: How Can I Effectively Manage My Remote Team? About this episode Wondering how to make sure your remote team is productive and on track when you can't physically see them? Not sure if everyone's actually working or just binge-watching their favorite shows? If that's got you scratching your head, today's lesson is just for you. Omar is diving into his tried-and-true strategies from 15 years of leading remote teams. He’ll break down how to set crystal-clear expectations, maintain open communication, build trust, and pick the right tools to make sure your team is crushing it, wherever they are. Get ready for some practical tips you can start using right away to keep remote work chaos at bay. Managing remote teams can be challenging so hit play at the top of the page and start embracing remote work and create a thriving team! To submit your questions, visit 100mba.net/q. Watch the episodes on YouTube: https://lm.fm/GgRPPHiSUBSCRIBEYouTube | Apple Podcast | Spotify | Podcast Feed
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Small business owners, listen up. You started your business, but you can't do it alone. And that means you have to hire people to help. That's where Justworks comes in. Justworks is the payroll, benefits, and global hiring platform to unburden your brain from all the complicated small business stuff. They handle the things you can't afford to get wrong, so you don't have to worry. So you can focus on the parts of running a business that you enjoy, knowing everything else is running smoothly. You don't have to worry when it just works. Ever invest in something that seemed incredible at first, but didn't live up to the hype? For example, I really wanted to love the show Mad Men. I really tried to watch it and love it, but it just didn't do anything for me. As a marketer and business person, the show was a little bit of a disappointment.
0:45 Speaker 00 Marketers know that feeling. They optimize for the numbers that look great, like impressions. But then, we don't see revenue. LinkedIn has a word for that: bullspend. Instead, you can get the highest ROAS of major ad networks with LinkedIn Ads. Cut the bullspend, advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com/MBAShow. Terms apply. How do you know if your remote team is actually working? If they're actually doing what they need to do to grow your business? That's the topic of today's Q&A Wednesdays episode.
1:27 Speaker 00 A question from Aaron, where he asks, "How can I effectively manage my remote team and make sure they're doing what they need to do to stay on track?" This is such an important question by Aaron, because remote work is becoming the norm now. This is the standard. People are expecting to work from home. This is becoming more and more important, more imperative for you to know how to manage a remote team without chaos, without not knowing if people are doing what they're supposed to be doing. I'm going to share with you what has worked for me in my experience of running remote teams for over 15 years. Yes, I've been doing this for a very long time before it was a normal thing, before it was popular, and I've done all the mistakes you could possibly imagine. So you don't have to. We're going to make sure that you have the strategies in
2:08 Speaker 00 place to build trust with your team, maintain productivity, and lead your team to success. Don't forget, if you've got a question you want to ask on Q and A Wednesday, go ahead and submit it over 100mba.net/queue. Remote work has exploded in the last few years. According to a study by Owl Labs, 74% of professionals expect remote work to become the standard. That means 74% of the people that are going to be looking to work for you are expecting to be working remotely. But managing a remote team requires different approaches. It requires a different plan than working in person. Let me give you a very clean example. When an employee works in an office, they pick up on cues, what
2:52 Speaker 00 other people are doing, what's expected, the culture, what should be done, what shouldn't be done, just by sitting there at their desk. They're aware of your presence, your physical presence of being in the office. They're overhearing conversations. They understand the gravity of the deadlines that are set. There is the sense of obligation they have because they're in person. All these things that we kind of leaned on and relied on just go away. They disappear when you're in a remote work setup. But what we want to do instead is have some strategies, have some techniques to make sure that we're not missing out on anything just because we're running our team remotely. What I've found to be the first step in this process is to set clear expectations. So that's
3:34 Speaker 00 step one. You've got to be able to tell your team members what it looks like to win, how to succeed at their job. Without clarity, remote teams and team members can quickly fall out of sync. They don't have any clear expectations around what your goals are, deadlines, communication. This makes it very hard for them to actually succeed because they don't know what the rules are. They don't know what success looks like. Here at the $100 MBA, with all our team members, we make it very clear from day one, and we repeat this over and over. This is what it looks like to win in your position. For example, if you are audio editor, Carl, who edits this podcast,
4:20 Speaker 00 In order for you to win at this team, you have to edit the podcast flawlessly in a timely manner so that we could publish on time. This is kind of the most critical thing you need to do. Make sure that it sounds brilliant, it's done properly, and that everything is published on time. It's done on a timely manner. You're handed over to your team members. You work together with them to make sure that things are published the way they should be, when they should be. Now, there's other things he's responsible for. There's other things he does, but that's kind of his north star. He knows this is how I win at this company. So, as an action step, create a document or a project management board where it clearly states what each position's goals are, right? What does winning look like for that position? What are
5:02 Speaker 00 the deliverables? Can you clearly state to them, hey, if you do this thing, right, or these few things, this is really what makes or break your job, right? This is really what makes you succeed. You don't have to overcomplicate this. You could just do this in a Google Doc. You don't even have to use any kind of project management tool. But as long as it's clear to your team members, hey, if you want to win at this business, if you want to win at my company, this is what winning looks like. It's only fair you give them the rules of the game so they can win. Step two, over communicate. One of the rules we have at our company is that you cannot over communicate. Okay. The reason why we say this is because we're a remote team. And when you are not in person, there's a lot that is lost because you're not
5:46 Speaker 00 getting other forms of communication. By just being in the same room with somebody, there is communication that's happening that is not verbal. So let me give you an example, like in real life. Imagine you met with your team every Monday at 10 o'clock and everybody shows up to the office at nine, or they show up to work remotely at nine. If John doesn't show up to the meeting, you don't have to wonder if he's at work today or not. If he didn't show up at his desk at nine, he's probably out sick. But if it's a remote team, it's a little bit of a mystery. Is he at work? Is he not? Did he check in? I haven't seen any messages. Let's ping him. Let's figure out if he has a link to the call. Maybe he's lost. Maybe he's lost internet connectivity. See how there's so much communication that needs to be done in order to avoid confusion.
6:30 Speaker 00 This is not bad or good. This is just different. When you're in a remote team, you have to over communicate a whole lot more than when you're in person. This is why we always have to have regular check-ins and that's why we have a habit in our team to say good morning when you start your day. So we kind of know what's going on, where you're at. Let me make something very clear. Over communicating doesn't mean micromanaging. It means ensuring clarity and making sure everybody's aligned. One of the things I really believe in business is that you have to trust but verify. And the verification is not on you, it's on them. You need to create a system in your business to make sure that they verify that they are doing what they're doing, right? Because if you do it, it's a micromanaging. It's you kind of hovering
7:15 Speaker 00 over them. So say, for example, you set up a system for check-ins. We do check-ins in our team. We use a tool called Basecamp that every day they do a check-in. This is what I did today. I worked on this project. I did X amount of customer support tickets, whatever it might be. And this allows me to know what they did without me asking. I don't need to hover all over them. I trust them and they verify that they are doing their job. So as an action step, establish some sort of cadence for these check-ins, whether it's asynchronously like we do online, like they do it themselves just by typing at the end of the day, or whether it's a stand-up, a daily stand-up. I used to do that when I was running my software company, Webinar Ninja, or a Slack message, whatever it might be, or a Zoom call, whatever. What is the cadence that
7:59 Speaker 00 you're going to have in your team regularly so that you can trust them and they verify that, hey, I'm actually on track, I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. And it's a good way for them to know that they're moving in the right direction. And here's the truth, our team members are fine with this because they know that they're getting the flexibility and the freedom to work in the comfort of their home, the way they like, and they have a lot more autonomy. Asking somebody to check in once a day is not asking a lot. The holidays are the season business owners get pulled in six directions. More calls, more requests, more chances for things to slip through the cracks. Hoping you catch it all isn't a plan. That's why today's episode is brought to you by QUO, spelt Q-U-O. The business phone built so you never miss a call or a customer.
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9:28 Speaker 00 Today's episode is sponsored by Upwork. I don't need a script to tell you how much Upwork has helped my business. I've been using Upwork for over a decade, and it's the easiest way to find top talent to grow your business. From software development to AI implementation to marketing, design, and business operations. You can browse profiles, review past work, and get help scoping the role so you can hire with confidence and get started quickly. With Business Plus, you can access the top 1% of talent on Upwork. With over 170,000 freelancers holding five-star ratings, you can hire with the confidence that comes from hiring someone with a verified track record. I've hired engineers, customer service agents, marketers, copywriters, all on Upwork that
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10:36 Speaker 00 Step three, use the right tools. Now, I'm not a big believer that tools are silver bullet. Tools are just as useful as the way you use them. So I like very simple, seamless, streamlined tools. Things like Google Docs, Google Drive, the Google Workspace suite is very easy to use. Another tool for just back and forth communication that's easy to use is like Slack or Google Chat, which is free. But if I was going to choose one tool to use and invest to run a remote team, I'd probably say Basecamp. I've been using Basecamp for maybe about eight or nine years now. It's one of the easiest tools to use. It's one of the easiest tools to learn. It's great for project management. It's great for to-do lists.
11:21 Speaker 00 It's great for chatting and it's incredibly affordable. I mean, I think it's like a hundred dollars a month, no matter how many users you have on your team, pretty crazy. But the point here is that it doesn't do every single thing under the sun, which is good because it could be confusing. It does just enough to keep you organized. So as an action step, audit your current tools. Ask your team which tools are actually using. Make it streamlined, make it simple and have the system that you've built work for you and the tools supplement that system. You want to make collaboration easy for your team without overwhelming them. Step four, you want to build a culture of trust and autonomy. I hinted at this earlier, but here's the bottom line. Micromanagement kills morale.
12:05 Speaker 00 It just really kills the whole vibe of your company. All right. You want to make sure your team members feel like you trust them, that you believe in their skills, you believe that they can make decisions, that they can do the work that you're asking them to do. Right? And that's why when you put the ownership of them to verify, you could put the ball in their court and as long as they verify they can have the autonomy they need. Remote teams really thrive when they feel trusted, when they feel empowered, when they feel like they have ownership over their work. Right? For example, I encourage my team to take initiative and solve problems on their own. Okay? The chances of them making the wrong decision and that decision being irreversible. are very slim, knowing that they have my support when they need it.
12:50 Speaker 00 This really builds a lot of confidence in our team. It makes them feel independent, makes them feel like they're part of this company. It also allows me not to have to worry about every single decision. It allows me to delegate a lot of that, you know, painful day to day, small minute decisions that really take up a lot of time. One of the things I use as a rule of thumb, and I encourage you to do as well, is to focus on outcomes, not the hours they put in. Judge your team members based on the quality of their work, based on what they actually produce, how they contribute to the success of the company. Trust them to manage their own time effectively. You want to put some guardrails maybe at the beginning, and some positions are a little bit different than others.
13:34 Speaker 00 For example, like customer support, they have to be online and be ready to answer a question from our customer via chat or email or something like that, or phone call. There's no kind of negotiation around that, right? They have to kind of be present. But outside of positions like that, you can give them tasks to complete and have them do it in a timely manner. Give them the autonomy to do it the way they want to do it. Step five, foster a team connection. Remote teams can feel isolated. Creating opportunities for a chance to connect with one another helps build camaraderie, helps build team spirit, helps improve collaboration and morale. Host a virtual hangout, do some games, have some fun. I remember during COVID, we did our team retreat online.
14:19 Speaker 00 It was throughout the week and we had some competition and we sent gifts in the mail and goodie bags. It was a lot of fun. And if you can do a team retreat in person, fantastic as well. But understand that a lot of people stay in a job because they enjoy it. I learned this from Scott Galloway. One of the number one reasons why people stay in a job and don't quit is because they have a friend at work, right? So allow them to become friends. Facilitate the ability for them to bond with each other. So as an action item, schedule regular team building activities, games, fun. If you can do an in-person retreat, that's amazing. Even if it's just a weekend or even a one day offsite, it makes all the difference. When we do our team retreats, people come back full with energy.
15:03 Speaker 00 And yes, there's an investment and there's a cost to running these retreats. But it's a great retention tool. My sixth and final step is provide feedback and recognition. Listen, we're human beings and people want to feel valued. People want to feel like they're important, that they're cared for, that people actually appreciate them. So it's important to give feedback to help them improve, but also to give them positive reinforcement. Use a feedback loop that acknowledges wins. Start your meetings with saying, hey, let's talk about our wins this week. What did we win this week? What are some milestones? Did we get mentioned in a blog post? Did we, you know, hit a certain milestone of traffic to our website or revenue this month?
15:46 Speaker 00 Celebrate a new hire, whatever it is. Seek opportunities to celebrate, seek opportunities to praise. I actually learned this when I was a manager in education. I was leading a team of 30 teachers and I had to give feedback a lot. I had to boost morale, especially if there was some low moments during the year when we didn't have a lot of breaks, you know, and we're trying to like kind of slog it through the semester. And we'd have a team meeting every month and I would really make it a point to find a reason to praise all the different people in the department so they can know that I appreciate them. And usually that appreciation will be enough fuel to push them through till the end of the semester. Managing a remote team effectively isn't about constant oversight or micromanaging. It's about building systems.
16:30 Speaker 00 It's about building trust and communication and setting clear expectations, using the right tools, fostering the right connections, right? And recognizing your team's ability to do it on their own, right? And praising them for their efforts. Aaron, who asked this question and everybody who's listening and watching, I hope these tips have helped you create a better understanding of how to manage your remote team that thrives. Thanks for tuning into the $100 MBA Show. Don't forget, remote work is pretty much here to stay. So we might as well embrace it and build systems around it. If you found this episode useful and you want more helpful business lessons, subscribe to the show to get the next episode automatically. It's the best way to support the show.
17:14 Speaker 00 It takes two seconds just to click that subscribe button. Thanks so much in advance for doing that, whether you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or watching on YouTube. I'm Omar Zenhome and I'll see you in the next episode. Take care.
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