Many tech startups are quietly embracing the distributed teams approach. This kind of teams knows better than every other team that transparent and open communication is in fact the live or die, and the success lives on how quickly they can communicate and execute based on the communication that happens.
Informal communication is one of the key features on traditional workspaces that remote teams lack for default. This must be a number one concern not just for the managing team but in fact for everyone. Lack of informal communication makes distributed teams falls back on 3 dysfunctions that could be highly painful for your business.
1- Trust
The first aspect we need to take care is trust. In every team, not just distributed teams, individuals tend to hide weakness, it’s a natural mechanism of human being to protect himself from pain and failure. But in distributed teams this is much more easy, no ones can see your body language and that kind of language accounts 55% of the overall message what’s make really easy to hide the true feelings.
So, your team full potential can only be achieved by leveraging the transparency on communication. One of best practices we see to overcome this issue it’s to setup regular one-to-one meetings with startup founders. This opens a powerful window to fuel your teamwork because it give a chance for teammates to share fears and anxieties, and for founders a quick way to provide constant feedback and steer them in right direction.
2- Commitment
Lack of commitment on virtual teams follows the absence of trust, and how distance can work as a shield for a true engagement on a startup culture and to share theirs opinions about startup day to day life. Your work as a manager is to take an active role to encourage everyone to share theirs thoughts and share wins within your team. Everyone wants to know when you’ve landed a major customer. Your development team would be amazed to know that users love the new features they implemented. This is the best way to make sure that no one gets left behind and to give them the motivation to work hard next time. It makes them feel they are a part of the same team.
3- Feedback
It’s easy for a remote team, especially in team with different timezones to feel isolated and unmotivated. If you want your team to excel you need to tell what’s performs good and what’s not. This constant feedback brings two major advantages for you and your team, they will respect you more and create a safety feeling by knowing what you expect from them.
With the right plan you could create an amazing kick-ass team regardless of the location. Distributed teams approach will be a trend for upcoming years, and is up to you as startup founder or manager to be ahead of this trend to ensure the full productivity of your team.
In meantime, you can always check how Winio.io can help your team improve communication.
