3 common mistakes made by first time remote managers and how to avoid them

2021 will be full of challenges, and if you’re a first time remote manager, knowing how to manage people remotely is likely to be one of them. Luckily, there are 3 common mistakes that are made time and time again which can be avoided.

Learn how to stay strong and avoid the common mistakes made by first time remote managers in this article.

Micromanaging your remote team

When you start managing a team remotely, it can be very tempting to micromanage and seek to control everything that goes on within your team. However, this is a classic manager rookie error and one that will leave your team feeling powerless, unmotivated and probably a bit frustrated.

Have the courage to manage your remote team with flexibility and freedom, despite not being able to see them constantly during work hours. Allowing employees to own their workload and take the reins will help them feel trusted, empowered and secure in their remote working set up.

Hiring the wrong people

First things first, if you’ve hired the wrong people then you will spend the entire year retracing your steps and trying to train them up. Finding the right people for your organization involves not only skills but ethos, core value and mission alignment too.

Knowing how to conduct an interview remotely will be a key skill in 2021, and one that any remote manager will want to brush up on if they want to succeed. Hiring the wrong people is a classic hiring error that will cause issues later down the track when it comes to managing your people.  Besides, hiring a wrong person can be expensive especially when you factor in cost of hiring, training, cost of delayed project and outcome.

Failing to connect remote teams with your mission and vision

One of the big dangers with remote working is that people can become disconnected with the company’s overall mission and start to feel like their work doesn’t matter. One of the common mistakes of first time remote managers is to fail to engage and connect employees to the company mission, vision and show them why their work is valuable to achieving company goals. 

We all want to know that our work is helping achieve something bigger than ourselves, so allowing remote employees to become detached from the company is a big no no.  Remote works want to make an impact on your business and feel accomplished when their hard work retains value to the company they work for.

How to avoid these common errors

  • Understand your remote people

In order to be a good remote manager, you need to know what kind of people you’re dealing with. Each individual will need a different management style in order to achieve, and understanding your team on a personal level is essential to this. It may also help to use personality tests like Kolbe, Strengthsfinder, Culture Index, to help understand the remote team members relate to you and others in the team. 

  • Have a Head Of Remote Work

The Head of Remote Work role is becoming more and more popular, and it’s clear to see why. Having a head of remote work in a company helps to keep everyone aligned, and ensure that remote work is carried out effectively.  Even if you do not have a full time head of remote work, you can always designate the role and the necessary outcome you need to an existing manager to ensure you are constantly introducing best practices to manage a remote team.

  • Work with a remote talent company

Working with a remote talent agency like BorderlessMind can be an amazing way to avoid the common errors of first time remote managers and establish the best practices to engage your remote team. Not only does a global remote talent  company assist you with hiring the top remote talent, they also assist with remote team management so you do not need to assign someone in your business to play this role.

These team managers help with goal alignment and can introduce remote team management best practices and train your existing teams to ensure that your critical projects are delivered on time and to spec.

Contact one of our remote team specialists today to discover the benefits of working with a remote talent agency like BorderlessMind can help you scale your business and accelerate your business outcomes.y.

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