Many of us consider that our local coffee shop is the ideal remote office, while traditional company leaders consider remote work to be a threat to their ability to manage employees.
The traditional office landscape is changing, whether we like it or not. These days, most of us work remotely in some way: maybe you work from home twice a week or answer calls on the train.
The benefits of remote work can go on and on:
- Avoiding the rush-hour traffic
- Saving commute costs
- Balancing personal life and professional life more
On the other hand, different time zones, internet connection problems, misunderstandings — these are just some of the challenging aspects when managing a cross-cultural remote team.
It’s a bit tricky to get a group of very different people to work together seamlessly, especially when they’re distributed around the world. But successful companies with their own culturally diverse teams have proven that it’s not impossible.
Here are some suggestions about managing cultural differences in remote work:
If in doubt, over-communicate
Effective and open communication is absolutely crucial in a remote team. Without it, everything falls apart.
Have conversations which have nothing to do with work
Ask questions about their national holidays, share your music playlist, talk about the latest movies, etc. When working remote, there is no communal break room for building relationships with your co-workers. So, you have to make this accidental chatter happen by intentionally setting aside a few minutes a day.
Video calls are gold
When it comes to communication with cross-cultural remote teams, you need to stick to video calls. Every culture has its own expressions and these can be easily misinterpreted if everyone isn’t familiar with their true meaning. This makes it risky to limit your communication to faceless texts or emails.
Video calls simulate the face-to-face interaction that we consider to be so important in the workplace.
Ask how they prefer to receive feedback
Giving feedback is key. It’s important to deliver it in a way that leads to actual improvement. Ask each member of your remote team how they want to receive feedback. It could be in a private email, during the daily call, or over the phone. Either way… You must not forget: Giving feedback is key!
Trust is the foundation
Being transparent about your company’s values and culture goes a long way towards establishing trust in a distributed team and also for hiring people who will thrive at your company. Remote teams have to trust their teammates. In a remote team, there aren’t any rules about having your butts in a seat during certain hours of the day — this means that at the end of the week you either have something to show for your week or not. This means you trust that your teammates are getting something done. But also, your teammates trust you. To earn that trust you want to make sure you have something to show for your work each week.
Set clear standards, regardless of culture, across the board
For instance, if strict timekeeping is important, it needs to be important to every remote worker, regardless of their time zone.
Make it a team commitment to learn about each other’s cultures
In the future, commuting itself will be a thing of the past.
If you own a remote-based company, your triumph over the competition will depend on your team’s thought leadership and standout talent.
If you’re a remote-based developer, you know, as a professional ahead of the power curve, that you’re looking for remote-based companies and clients who appreciate a world-class remote team.
Embrace diversity and you can have it all!
You don’t need everyone physically together to create a strong culture. The best cultures derive from actions people actually take.
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