Team leaders, especially those managing global remote teams, often feel overwhelmed, juggling multiple responsibilities and demands while also trying to support their team’s growth. In this article, we’ll explore practical strategies to help you become a more calm, strategic, and inspiring leader. You’ll learn how to create a collaborative, uplifting, and calm ecosystem that allows you and your teams to thrive.
Time Audit: Where Does Your Time Go?
Before we start, let’s do a quick assessment to determine how you’re currently spending your time.
- Where are you in your company’s hierarchy?
- How much time do you spend managing your workload?
- What is the number of people you are currently managing; how many teams are you leading?
- How much time do you dedicate to managing your team?
Many leaders are so busy with daily tasks that they unintentionally neglect essential management activities such as building relationships, coaching, and providing feedback.
Actionable Step:
Conduct a weekly time audit. Break down your activities into task execution, team management, and personal growth. Identify gaps between how you should and want to spend your time versus how you actually do it.
Common Time Management Challenges For Global Remote Teams
Leading remote teams across different time zones comes with unique challenges. You may encounter issues such as:
- Scheduling Conflicts: Overlapping work hours might be limited.
- Communication Delays: Misaligned schedules can slow down decision-making.
- Burnout Risks: Team members in different regions might feel isolated or overworked.
Actionable Step:
Adopt tools like Asana, Monday.com, or Slack to collaborate and share project goals, deadlines, and milestones. Microsoft Teams is an excellent communication platform for sharing schedules and tracking tasks. Encourage your teams to keep their availability up-to-date. Most of these tools integrate with or include video platforms, enabling a circular, real-time communication and collaboration ecosystem that empowers remote teams.
Knowing Yourself As A Leader
Understanding your strengths and areas for improvement is critical for effective leadership. We need to be able to manage ourselves to manage our teams effectively. When we are not effective enough in our tasks, it becomes much more challenging to give of ourselves and effectively manage a team.
Reflect on these questions:
- What are your core values?
- How do you handle stress and time management?
- Where could you improve your leadership skills?
Actionable Step:
To identify blind spots, use a self-assessment tool or seek feedback from colleagues. Commit to one area of improvement and track your progress over the next quarter.
Meetings: Finding The Right Balance
Meetings are essential for team cohesion. It’s a time to get together, share information and challenges, receive team support, share success stories, and acknowledge excellent performance and accomplishments.
But poorly managed meetings waste time and dampen enthusiasm.
Consider the following:
- Are your meetings overly formal and too frequent, leaving little time for productive work?
- Do you rely too much on ad hoc conversations, which interrupts your time and may leave other team members out?
- Are you meeting frequently enough to ensure alignment and motivation?
Actionable Steps:
Establish a meeting rhythm:
- Weekly check-ins for updates and feedback
- Monthly strategy sessions for long-term planning.
- Quarterly reviews to reflect on progress and set new goals.
For global remote teams, record meetings for those unable to attend and share concise meeting notes.
Build Strong Team Relationship
Team members perform best when they feel supported and valued. Assess your team’s dynamics with these questions:
- Are roles and responsibilities clearly defined?
- Do your team members know their strengths and areas for improvement?
- Is everyone aligned with the team’s goals and expectations?
Actionable Step:
Create individual development plans for each team member. Schedule one-on-one meetings to discuss their goals, challenges, and feedback. Use these insights to tailor your management approach.
Mastering The Art Of Feedback
Feedback is a leader’s most impactful tool, yet it’s often underutilized or poorly delivered. Your team members welcome positive feedback and encouragement. Positive feedback should be specific and constructive, emphasizing the behavior or effort behind success. It should focus on a particular task, project, event, or behavior.
Actionable Step:
Adopt the “5:1 Rule”: aim to give five instances of positive feedback for every piece of constructive criticism. For example:
“Sara, your report was excellent because it clearly outlined actionable recommendations. Your attention to detail really stood out.”
Ask yourself:
- How often do you provide positive feedback?
- Are you specific enough to make your praise meaningful?
- Are you balancing praise with constructive suggestions?
Streamlining Team Communication
Effective communication is the backbone of a productive team, especially in remote settings. Evaluate how you’re currently communicating:
- Is your messaging clear and concise?
- Are you using the right tools for the purpose? (e.g., Slack for quick updates, email for formal communication)?
- Are you checking in too often or not enough?
Actionable Steps:
Set up a communication framework:
- Daily updates via messaging platforms for quick progress reports.
- Weekly team meetings for broader discussions.
- Open-door policy (even virtually for global remote teams) to encourage team members to share concerns.
Small Changes, Big Impact
Leadership doesn’t require you to overhaul your style in one moment. Small changes can have a remarkable impact on your teams. Here are a few ideas:
- Dedicate 30 minutes daily to mentor one team member.
- Replace vague praise with specific, meaningful feedback.
- Reserve uninterrupted time for your personal tasks to lead by example in time management.
- Rotate meeting times to accommodate different time zones equitably.
Actionable Step:
Choose one new management habit to implement each week. Over the next month, track its impact on you and your team.
Key Takeaways
- Understand your role: Balance your time between managing your workload and your team.
- Adapt to remote challenges: Leverage tools and strategies to overcome time zone communication barriers when managing remote teams.
- Invest in your team: Use feedback, development plans, and meetings to build motivated, collaborative, high-performing teams.
Ready to take the next step?
Explore more leadership tips on our YouTube channel, or book a coaching session to tailor strategies to your unique challenges. A small change today could lead to remarkable growth tomorrow–for you and your teams.
Samantha Amit – Leadership Coach and Mindfulness Practitioner
Samantha helps managers be more present, more confident and to focus on what and who is important, to excel and thrive at work and life.
Inspiring managers to grow and together make a global impact.
Transforming people and companies for the future.
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