Remote team management can be more complicated than managing in-person teams. Often, the communication breakdowns that underly poor management happen more rapidly and are far more apparent when a team is remote.
If you are struggling to manage a remote team, look at the warning signs below to see if you need to change your management style.
Five Warning Signs That Tell You to Change Your Management Style
1. The most obvious is that things are not getting done.
Clearly, if work is not getting done and milestones aren’t being met, there is something wrong with management. Take a look at the team(s) you manage. Do you usually meet goals, or is your team always late in accomplishing milestones. Do you dread due dates and find that things are not getting done?
If your team isn’t accomplishing the goals you and the business leaders are setting; it’s time to re-look at your management style.
2. Your team is not communicating with you.
Communication breakdowns underpin most management issues. So, the next most obvious sign that your management style is not working is that your team has stopped communicating with you. This is a sign of a severe breakdown, and you may have slid down a slippery slope to get to the point of no communication. Even a reduction of communication can indicate that your management approach isn’t working for your team.
3. Everything seems to land on your plate.
Your team is there to get things done. If this isn’t happening, the undone actions will fall to you for completion. That is one way everything can land on your plate.
Another management do-not that will cause many undone tasks to land in your lap is failing to delegate. If you aren’t delegating tasks and assigning jobs to appropriate team members, you aren’t managing a team. You are doing all of the work on your own and keeping your team on the sidelines.
Both situations are untenable and need to be addressed with your team.
4. Personnel are unstable.
Are your employees quitting, or does it seem that the training isn’t sinking in? Do you have personnel that perpetually seem unhappy?
The problem may lie with your management style.
5. You have to remind people that you are the boss.
It’s hard to be the boss of a particular area. However, if you continuously need to remind people to follow your lead and consult your expertise, something is wrong.
When encountering the above issues, the entire problem may not lie in your particular management style. There may be company culture issues, a person on the team that causes strife, poor training materials, and unorganized instruction. However, taking a top-down approach can help you to pinpoint where things are off-base.
Take This First Step in Updating Your Management Style with Remote Teams
The best place to start when correcting any management issue is by choosing to improve the leadership. But where do you start when it feels like you are constantly putting out fires?
The first step is to communicate with your team.
This can be difficult, particularly if you have lost your team’s respect or continuously encounter miscommunication with team members. However, the first place to go to repair your relationship with your team will always be frank conversation.
Schedule one-on-one meetings with your team members and go over the issues you’ve encountered. Ask for their honest feedback on how you can do better. Also, be sure to find out what you’ve been doing that works for them. Sometimes, when a manager decides things need to change, they change everything, including what was working.
Your team wants to be producing at the top of their game. The majority of team members will want to see you improve because when management improves, the whole workplace improves.
Once you and your teammates pinpoint what changes need to be made, be sure to include the whole team in the improvements. This is an excellent base from which further communication - and enhancements - can grow.
Are you looking to overhaul your management systems and infrastructure? Business Success Consulting Group can help! Schedule a free initial consultation to find out what we can do for your company.
