Guide for managing remote teams

Leading remotely can be challenging. A team culture of psychological safety and  wellbeing sounds good in theory, but how do you put it into practice?  And how do you do it when connecting and communicating with your team is more complex? Our guide for leading well remotely offers practical strategies across the 5 Pillars of Resilience – an evidence-based model for building the resilience of teams and leaders.

Energy

The Energy Pillar is about how you fuel and refuel.  Support this pillar by:

• Encouraging your team to establish and agree core working hours in order to pace activity throughout the day
• Ensuring you and your team schedule short ‘refresher’ breaks to replenish and recharge
• Considering the timing and scheduling of meetings – not too early or late in the day and certainly not too long!

Future Focus

The Future Focus Pillar is about what you want and how you’re going to make it happen.  Support this pillar by:

• Communicating key priorities and agreeing how, when and who will own these
• Forward-planning for future deadlines and scheduling activity to support a balanced workflow during this timeline
• Creating regular check-ins to ensure everyone in the team is aligned and understands their role in contributing to the agreed goals

Inner Drive

The Inner Drive Pillar draws on self-belief and motivation.  Support this pillar by:

• Taking time as a team to acknowledge your collective strengths and understand how these will support you to excel in your role
• Identifying potential gaps in your knowledge and taking action to address these
• Noticing what’s going well and viewing any challenging aspects as an opportunity to learn and grow as a team

Flexible Thinking

The Flexible Thinking Pillar centres on your ability to think laterally and creatively.  Support this pillar by:

• Watching out for ‘group think’ – encourage your team to bring an element of healthy challenge to discussions
• Noticing what other teams are doing well and asking them to share how they do this
• Inviting key stakeholders to suggest how your team might continually improve and add value in your role

Strong Relationships

The Strong Relationships Pillar is about the give and take of connecting with others.  Support this pillar by:

• Having open conversations with each team member about how you can best support them
• Ensuring your meetings include time for informal conversation and personal connection
• Diarising regular whole team updates – even if there’s nothing new to share, coming together as a full team is more important than ever