Team Management: When Your Team Is Everywhere

I heard once in a job interview that you recognize a person who has worked for a real global organization when you see his/her ability to work remotely and interact with people in other locations. Do you agree?

Nowadays, the possibility to work when traveling or from a different office than the HQ is easier than ever before in terms of the technology available to do the work and to communicate. We have emails, CRM systems, document management systems and videoconferencing to mention some examples. Those are affordable and globally available, however, there are many other relevant aspects which need to be considered when dealing with employees and managers sitting in different locations. 

Communication plays an essential role when building and managing geographic dispersed teams. 

Let’s see the both sides of the story. On one hand, if you are the employee who is working from other location, you might feel abandoned, misinformed and why not, ignored if you are not communicating often with your team. The same feeling if you are all the time on the road. On the other hand, if you are the manager, you might feel uncomfortable because you cannot see exactly what this person is doing; perhaps you are afraid that the person is not getting the job done or  you are not even sure if he/she is aware of what is happening in the company. It is a difficult situation for both parts.

Managing a team that is spread out in many locations or with people who are traveling continuously is a huge challenge, even for the most experienced bosses. The videoconferencing, intranets, and emails are very useful tools but, by themselves are not enough to create employees commitment or engagement. An efficient information flow and communication are essential to get powerful results, but those only work when are strategically managed.

  

You as a manager need to ensure that your voice is heard. You are responsible for getting your employees "happy" or at least you need to make sure that your employees are not feeling isolated at any point and that they feel confident to contact you to ask for more information or for anything they need. 

Finding the right people to work in different locations

To successfully work in teams located in different parts of the world you need to be careful already at the recruitment process. Selecting the right people is a key point to make your team work:

- These people need to be self-motivated to keep on track and inspired even if they are far away from their bosses and other team members.

- Communication skills are also crucial and at this point I am not just talking about speaking various languages, but more about being able to interact with other people, understand others and make him/herself understood.

- Opening and trust are also essential for making this relations work. This will help you to avoid misunderstandings.

Team creation and motivation

It does not matter where your team members are sitting, make sure you develop a strong team spirit. Things will only works when your team members feel integrated and part of an “all”. They also need to know what their purpose is, in order to actually go for it.

Don’t forget to give continuous feedback and reward their performance. Be positive and keep the interaction with an inspiring tonality. As you cannot see exactly how they feel about a particular situation, make sure to be open and try to get (and to give) as much as you can for each interaction. Instead of dropping two lines emails all the time, invest some minutes in a phone call or in a video call. Be consistent and fair with all the members of the team. Stay in regular contact to follow-up goals and challenges but, especially to guarantee that they never feel forgotten. Get involved.

Why Social Media Is Important?

It is hard to believe, but often I find people who still perceive social media as something that is somewhere "far away", for "younger people", or "not relevant" for the business. Their opinions about the social media do not go further than those are some channel to put vacation pictures or to check what your friends are doing. Yes, we all know that social media channels can be used for that purpose, but there is more potential than that. Something that disappoints me is that many of these guys who have these perceptions, are in a very relevant position in their company. They are not encouraged to use the channels. Their right use of the social media would absolutely benefits their company but, at this point they are ignoring it or they are delegating this "work" to somebody else in the organization.

The truth is that social media matters. As many employees, leaders and managers from the company get into it and actually use the channels, as much the company will benefit from using those.

If you have any doubts, look at these basic benefits of social media use for business purpose:

• It helps you to increase exposure. This means that your company and your products will be out there, and other people will be able to find you.
• This also will increase traffic to your website. (I hope you have one for your company...). Getting more people going to your website will increase the chance that they get to know your products and services and therefore, they might contact you to buy those. (Please, make sure that your website is good enough to catch and keep your visitors attention. It is not the fault of your social media channel if they get to your page, and they do not find enough info). 
• It improves search ranking: Social media channels in combination with other channels provide the Internet with keywords and terms which will make your company and products easier to search and easier to find online. The right wording will make your company rank higher in the search ranking. This means that if a person, for example, searches for some product as the one that you are selling, your company/product will appears on the top of the searching list. Please notice that the social media channels cannot make your right higher by themselves, you also need the proper content on your website and on your blog, etc.  
• It helps you developing loyal customers. You can call them followers or fans, but the main point is that these are the customers or prospects who are interested in your company and in your products. Good and loyal fans are happy if you communicate often with them, especially if you share useful information and bring them solutions. The social media channels will help you to increase this kind of communication.
• Social media helps you to generate leads. With the combination of the previous points, for example, increasing communication with your customer and prospects, you can get potential buyers. The point of using social media channels is not only to catch the attention but, to do something with the info that you get from them. Use the data and the contacts which you get from the channels to understand your customers better, and to reach your sales goals.
• Social media will help you to get more information about your industry, for example, what they are talking about, who are the influencers, what your competitor is doing and which other companies or people can help you to expand or develop your business. Social media can help you to find great partnership. 

When the social media channels are used smartly, those can help you to reach a big audience in a short time. Social media channels use is quite affordable in comparison to the traditional channels which might help you to reduce your marketing expenses. Remember to focus on great content and great communication with your audience. I can guarantee that you will see results.

How To Become A Good Communicator

It is truth that there are many people who are born with the talent and the right charisma to communicate. For sure you know somebody who can "hypnotize others" or who really catches your attention when talking. Or you know somebody who expresses him/herself so well that you read all the articles, columns and even all the tweets (over and over again). Communication is a skill that can be developed with training and personal effort, therefore, if you have thought that you want to be that kind of person, a great communicator, this is possible.


Some tips to become a good communicator:

Know what you are talking about: prepare yourself to express well. If you don't know what you are talking about, you will feel uncomfortable, and this will make your communication more challenging. Prepare yourself and get to know the topic well. 


Be clear and precise with your words: Less is more. I mean, use simple vocabulary that most of the people can understand and clear sentences which you are able to read without losing your breath. Select the main ideas and express those separately. 

Communicate enough, but not too much: select the main topics and the main issues to communicate. Do not try to talk about too many things at once. (This works if you are communicating by writing, too). Talking about too many things at the time only makes you confusing, and your audience will lose the focus. Say enough to keep your audience interested, but not too much to make them sleep. 

Use your strengths and combine different channels: If speaking in public is not your thing, no worries, nowadays more a more you can use different channels and tools to communicate with different audiences. If you are "forced" to talk in public you can use good visual to help you to present your ideas. Please, do not read only the PowerPoint presentation. Instead, use those texts, pictures and ideas to complement what you want to say. In case you don't need to talk in public but you are willing to communicate with different audiences, you can use different social media channels to express yourself, for example, Twitter, SlideShare, Instagram, or a blog. 

Be consistent: let's assume that you are a leader and you are managing a team. The best way to build a good team and reinforce the trust is by being consistent always when you communicate with them. Keep the same (positive, inspirational...) tonality, good attitude and your own communication style when you communicate with your employees. The same applies if you are communicating with customers. Remember, it is important that you align what you are saying with how you are saying it. Always.


Be authentic: You can see other people's way of communicate and learn from them. However, do not try to imitate others' style. Create a style that fits you well and makes you feel comfortable. To get a good audience you don't need to fake who you are.

Practice: This is particular useful if you are speaking in public. Writing down your ideas and reading those loud will help you to feel more confident about your presentation. 

Pay attention to others: If you are talking in public maintain a good eye contact with all the audience, listen to them, see their reactions and take their actions into consideration e.g. answering questions, sharing a friendly tonality, smiling, etc. in case you communicate by writing "listening to them" is also important. This means read your audience well and try to satisfy their communications needs. For example, if you are receiving feedback or comments, answer and follow-up until you feel the message has been delivered satisfactorily.


Good communications skills are useful for everything in our life -from personal relationship to business development. Do not take communication for granted and make always an effort to develop your skills.

Give Me A Break!: Work Stress, Burnout, And The Time To Relax

Recharging batteries and taking a break is good for both, our physical and mental health.

There are many health risks involved in not taking a break from work, especially if your work is stressful. The main reason is that our body is designed to respond to short period of stress but, when stress is prolonged, the situation becomes chronic and then the health problems start to appear. It is well known that stress is related to many different medical conditions -from insomnia and obesity, to heart diseases. In addition, burnouts are becoming more and more common.

It is not only about your physical and mental deterioration but, there is more damage involve in working without taking breaks. When you focus too much on working, you work longer days and you are worried about work issues outside the office, you miss out on your friends and family; you are more susceptible to eat badly and exercise less. Many people working at office are also spending a long period of time sitting in front of the computer. All these issues are part of a bad "cycle" and therefore, it each of those actions produces more stress in the long term. 

The damage produced by the stress affects the company and the company results as well. A clear fact is that the people who are stressed are getting sick more often, and perhaps they are not able to deliver their best result because they are not in their most productive condition. No doubt that stress management at work should be an important issue to take care of.

The pressure of working too much

Why people are working too much without taking care of themselves? Well, perhaps we just have been forced to do so. There are many factors related to stress at work and perhaps the cultural and societal pressure is one of the most relevant. When people work hard, the society appreciates it. To be busy has became normal, and even a respectable status. The society also values "achieving" therefore, people are afraid of failing, giving up and showing tiredness or weaknesses. As a result, we are all continuously pushing ourselves to the limit to be seen as “successful”.

We should add to the pressure from the society, the work pressure or the role pressure. We try to do tasks at irrational rhythm and we try to do much more than what is reasonable possible. We do this constantly and we are continuously pushing for (even) more. Sometimes this is part of our lifestyle or personality however, we are not the only responsible for this pressure. Asking more and more from employees has also become a standard in many company cultures. Do you feel sometimes that nothing is enough? Or if you achieve something this year, you need to achieve the double next year? 

The recession has a lot to do with this situation, too. In times of recession is very common to find companies letting go people but, the work itself does not leave the company. Because the future is unclear, many companies are not taking the risk to hire new employees although there will be more than enough work to do now. The result is that there are a lot of employees doing the work of many.

We cannot forget to talk about the other external factors affecting our daily work and making our days more stressful e.g. noisy working environment, demanding customers, unclear company strategy, money pressure, unstable economy and fair to lose our job just to mention some examples). 

Taking a break

The good news is that despite of the factors and issues I mentioned above, it is pretty much our own responsibility to take care of ourselves. Yes, there are some circumstances which we cannot control, but there are small actions that we can take every day to release stress and become more productive and happy. Yes, I know that taking a ten minutes break once will not solve the entire problem, but taking 10 minutes break every day will make you feel better than without any breaks. If you combine this with the holidays, interesting hobbies outside work, healthy eating and good sleeping habits a good relaxation can be achieved.

Each step counts. When you feel overwhelmed with all the work remember that you get more done quicker when you step back and recharge the brain and the body. The 10 minutes break can be that first step ... if you make this and habit it will help you. I know that this is easier to say than to do. Next time when you are tempted to forget your break to finish an assignment or call a customer, remember that after your break you will perform at a more optimum level, so perhaps taking those minutes to breath will save you few hours of extra work.