The 9-Hour Divide: Mastering Remote Team Leadership Across the Globe
Originally published on LinkedIn May 8, 2023
Leading a team on another continent can be a big challenge. As a Bay Area resident in the Pacific time zone, my teams were 8 hours (UK), 9 hours (Europe), or even 10 hours (Israel) ahead of me. That posed numerous challenges, especially mentoring, coaching, and execution. Nothing is more challenging than waking up early in the morning and feeling behind schedule already.
I developed a strategy over the last two decades that will help you overcome the time zone challenge. I will cover the following best practices in this blog post:
Establishing clear communication channels
Scheduling regular meetings
Using asynchronous communication
Setting clear expectations and deadlines
Fostering a culture of trust and autonomy
Being flexible and adaptable
Providing support and resources
Encouraging team bonding
Applying these practices enables you to manage a team many hours away.
Playbook: leading a remote team
Establish clear communication channels:
Agree on the communication tools your team will use and at what frequency everyone will monitor the messages.
Implement instant messaging guidelines for synchronous communication. I have used Slack at my last three companies, and MS Teams is also popular. Agree when you monitor/respond to direct messages vs. the various channels. I looked at Slack between meetings.
Ask to be tagged by your team. I had difficulty fishing out comments from channels when my team did not tag me explicitly. Have your team pull you into the proper conversation with @ mention or send you a direct link when there is something important to look at, especially in the morning when getting online.
Establish guidelines for urgent communication. To get my attention urgently, WhatsApp became my favorite tool, as it works over data internationally. That's the only app I would allow to interrupt me during a meeting, and I would take a glance in case something super urgent was coming through. Slack messages would not alert or pop on my phone screen, only WhatsApp to minimize distractions.
Agree on how your team will use email. For me, it was an end-of-day review. My team would avoid urgent messages via that medium, and I received a Slack ping if there was something critical to check.
Schedule regular meetings:
Schedule recurring one-on-ones early in the week, preferably before the leadership team meeting, so that you come informed and are perceived on top of things when planning the week with the leadership team. If you can't fit all of the one-on-ones on Monday morning, rotate some one-on-ones on Fridays to keep it fair.
Organize your team meeting right after the leadership meeting, preferably the following morning. You will have all the necessary decisions to ensure alignment and take action.
Schedule recurring meetings at times convenient for all team members, considering each person's time zone. Rotate meeting times to accommodate different team members' schedules fairly.
Implement a weekly office hour to bring your team and extended stakeholders into conversation and alignment.
Use asynchronous communication:
Encourage team members to share updates, ask questions, and provide feedback asynchronously. For team alignment, have the team share their updates ahead of one-on-ones, what they worked on, and the plan for next week (see my article for more details on one-on-ones: How does a successful one-on-one meeting look like?).
For rigorous alignment, you can have the team write a daily end-of-day summary of their work and any challenges they face (10-15 min writeup). The updates will allow you to see any shift in priorities, and you will have time to respond to the challenges before the team member wakes up to work the day.
Share organizational updates periodically via the established communication mediums, for example, an internal YouTube video, a group email, and a Slack message. All forms of communication should carry the same message, as people consume updates in various formats, and that is the only way to touch most stakeholders. You will likely not over-communicate, so feel free to leverage all these communication forms. My experience has been that I could have done even more, no matter how much I communicated.
Foster a culture of asynchronous documentation by implementing tools like Notion, Confluence, or Sharepoint. All topics for decision-making and discussion should be in narrative format to facilitate feedback by the team (and extended stakeholders). Meetings can take place to finalize decisions as necessary, but only after the online discussion took place.
Implement project management software and collaboration platforms such as Asana and Monday to track commitments and progress. You can also use JIRA if you use it with the engineering team.
Robust tools allow everyone to contribute and stay informed without being dependent on synchronous communication.
Set clear expectations and deadlines:
Establish clear objectives, responsibilities, and deadlines for each team member, ensuring everyone understands their role and expectations. This rigor provides a sense of accountability and ensures that work progresses even when team members are offline simultaneously.
Publish the objectives and responsibilities online to ensure transparency and alignment across the team and key stakeholders. Your group, and even the broader organization, will save time sorting out ownership and accountability. Getting the ownership right takes work and will never be 100% correct, so do not obsess about perfection. Do your best to make ownership as transparent as possible and communicate changes immediately, and you will be rewarded with much more effective decision-making across your organization.
Foster a culture of trust and autonomy:
Trust your team members to manage their time and complete tasks independently, allowing them to work at their most productive hours. As shared earlier, if you have a mid-high maturity team, they can complete tasks effectively with their approach, and your goal will be to guide them in completing tasks they have little to no experience with.
Foster a sense of psychological safety, encouraging open communication and expressing unconventional ideas without fear of judgment or criticism. You can create this culture starting with your one-on-ones (see my article for more details on one-on-ones: How does a successful one-on-one meeting look?).
Focus on a results-oriented approach, driving outcomes rather than the specific hours worked. Set clear, time-bound goals, and hold your team members accountable for delivering the results.
Be flexible and adaptable:
Recognize that working across time zones can be challenging, and that team members may have different preferences or limitations. Be open to adjusting schedules, deadlines, and meeting times as needed to accommodate everyone.
Start early to show your flexibility, and your team will reciprocate by extending their working hours into the evenings.
Consider focused working days. Free the second half of the week by limiting or eliminating meetings completely to allow the team to execute without interruptions while making yourself available for questions. I have seen remote teams drown in meetings, where they felt compelled to gather to discuss a topic or deliver an update to stay in sync. If you implement proper asynchronous communication techniques, your team will have much more flexibility to get their work done.
Provide support and resources:
Ensure team members have access to the tools, resources, and training needed to work effectively across time zones. Support may include offering time management training, providing remote work resources, or facilitating access to relevant software and tools. One of my favorite tools for product managers is Reforge, which has practical lessons for basic and advanced product management practices.
Consider a book club and select topics that come up frequently. For example, cultural differences can introduce friction, leading to time-consuming damage control. Books such as The Culture Map by Erin Meyer can be very effective and shortcut the amount of time you will spend mentoring the team on cultural differences.
Encourage team bonding:
Create opportunities for team members to connect and build relationships, even if they are not in the same time zone. Bonding could involve virtual team-building activities, informal online gatherings, or sharing personal updates and successes.
Travel as a new leader (budget permitting) and spend time physically as a team together. There is no substitute for bonding in person. Even if you have to fly a few team members into one location, time together will make a huge impact, and if you are a new leader, your ramp-up will be far more effective. If travel is impossible, block 3-4 hours a few days in a row to get to know each other. Regardless of the format, group meetings will bond the team professionally and personally.
In conclusion, effectively leading a remote team across significant time zone differences is achievable by implementing a comprehensive set of strategies. Focusing on clear communication channels, regular meetings, asynchronous communication, and setting expectations and deadlines will ensure a smooth workflow while cultivating a culture of trust, autonomy, and adaptability will empower team members to excel in their roles. Periodically evaluate your team's communication and collaboration, and involve team members in refining and enhancing remote work practices. By working together and continuously iterating, you can overcome the challenges of time zone differences and lead a successful, high-performing remote team.