Hubbert Smith

Early in my career, I was tasked with all sorts of random, weird, short-fused things. When I was introduced to a new team, I learned the habit of doing something for others before asking others to do something for me. It’s a simple gesture, that says, “You matter.” Our sense of belonging is strengthened with each and every “you matter” moment. It is not a given that team formation fulfills these basic human social needs.

Teams can fulfill everyone’s need for purpose and everyone’s need for a place. These needs are consistent with our belong-and-become wiring. With new teams, especially when remote, our survival wiring can over-ride our belong and-become wiring. The way to overcome our unhappy survival wiring, and stimulate our happy belong-and-become wiring, is simply to help each other in some small way. Empathy matters. Empathy is a choice. Empathy is only real if it is consistent and lasting.

• Tools are just tools. How teams use them to establish, work together, and accomplish significant goals is more important than tool minutiæ. Teams don’t live by Zoom alone. To be consistently effective, remote tech teams
need tools, but teams require nurturing.
• Define outcomes in terms of problem statements, not dictated solutions. Involve the team to fi nd the ideal solution. Be clear about the goals and outcomes.
• Use the POR to stay focused—“We can discuss anything.”
• Close every discussion with a clarifying statement: “we did (or did not) change the POR.”
• Don’t allow ignoring/re-imagining of the goals, outcomes or POR, as that’s a disservice to others on the team.
• Short projects = successful projects. When new stuff is requested, push it into the next project rather than interrupt the current active project. Relentless prioritization is good for business.
• Engage the team for risk management. Stuff can go wrong, let’s get ahead of it and either change the plan to avoid the risk or accept the risk together.
• Engage functional managers early and often, to confirm resources don’t evaporate without forewarning.
• Play people to their strengths: ask simple questions (how would you prefer to contribute?)
• Is this assignment too easy or too challenging? Do you understand what’s needed? Are you set up for success?
• Use your position as team lead to manage conflict: “I let the team down, I wasn’t clear about the goals, let’s revisit them.” Don’t lay blame, learn and
improve.
• Insist on empathy and mutual respect.
• Ignoring input, not responding to reasonable requests needs to be (gently) addressed.
• Be vigilant to help “outsiders” contribute their very best work. Outsiders are frequently treated as second-class citizens, give them a voice and equal status as a team member. Outsiders are those not located at headquarters, those who speak English as a second language, and contractors not directly
employed.
• Bring out the best in others and in yourself. None of us is afraid of hard work, we just need a bit of structure and to be set up for success.
• We are wired to find our place and our purpose.

Let’s do that, because this is the way to functional remote teams.