The last three posts have been focused on overcoming challenges encountered on remote teams. Part 1 was focused on getting your virtual team aligned, Part 2 on building cohesion, and Part 3 on creating disciplined team processes.

Today's post is focused on remote team leadership.

In my last two posts, we tackled a few challenges that remote teams face. Part 1 was focused on getting your remote team aligned. Part 2 on building cohesion.

In this post we'll focus on process.

For remote teams to maximize their effectiveness, they need to have disciplined processes in place. Here are some ideas you might consider:

In Part 1 of this series, we discussed some of the challenges of working on remote teams and ideas for getting your remote team aligned. But, to truly be effective, your remote team has to find a way to build cohesion. After all, only when people are working together on the right things can we gain efficiencies.

Here are a few ideas:

Working on teams where some or all team members are remote is becoming the norm rather than the exception. And frankly, having remote team members adds complexity that often times accelerates and amplifies communication breakdowns.

For example,

I went to the dentist last week for the first of two visits to get a crown placed on a cracked tooth. Honestly, I hate going to the dentist. Don't get me wrong. My dentist is extremely competent, and I trust his work.

Have you ever watched a 400-meter relay team work?
On a good team, their hand-offs are impeccable.

In fact, given two teams of equal quality runners, the team with the more efficient
hand-offs always wins. The same holds true in the work place.

Effective communication is intentional. A simple tool for speaking assertively and authentically is using the "I" statement. Here is an exerpt from John W. Jacobs.

At the heart of better communication is the self-statement. A self-statement puts the responsibility for your emotional experience squarely on your shoulders. It is one single, easy-to-learn skill that can most dramatically improve the communication.

In many of my past articles, I have written about the importance of management’s influence on retention, productivity, morale, and employee satisfaction. You have heard me rant and rave about how “employees don’t leave organizations, they leave their managers.”

Well, there is a flip side to that coin too.

Every team member has a responsibility to effectively communicate with his or her manager. Let me say that a little bit stronger. You are primarily responsible for making sure communication with your manager is working.

We all perceive the world according to our own reality. The experiences we have had in the past and the experiences we have today all create the perceptions that we hold about other people. Those perceptions influence our biases (and we all have biases), which in turn influence our behaviors.

Sometimes our biases are so ingrained that we don't even know they exist.

To be successful leaders and successful team members we have to become aware of our biases and how they influence our interactions with others in the workplace.