The Modern Leader
Distributed teams are critical to accessing global talent pools while acknowledging the challenges of remote work.
- Why it matters: Deel reported a clear increase in global hiring from 2022 to 2023. And despite what we see in the news, 1 in 5 workers in the U.S. worked remotely at least one day a week, meaning remote work is still very much alive and well. This underscores the critical need for effective distributed team management in our interconnected tech world.
Being a leader of a distributed team isn’t quite the same as being the leader of a team in the same office or even the same time zone. I speak from experience! While other teams work a hybrid model at our company, Engineering remains geographically distributed: so much so that my team actually spans from California to India.
So what’s required if you’re running a distributed team?
First: You must learn the culture(s) of where you’re hiring, and you can’t expect everyone to adopt your local culture.
- One of the biggest reasons I see distributed teams fail is because they try treat a global team like a local team through culture, communication, and work ethic. It’s just not the same.
Second: You must treat even a partially-distributed team like everyone is working remotely.
- Even if you have some workers in the office or geographically close to you, you operate like your team is fully remote. Why? If you unknowingly start to favor your local team (more interesting projects, after-work drinks, context from face-to-face conversations that isn’t carried over to the internet), your global or distributed teammates will feel that physical separation, killing morale.
Third: Large-scale success in distributed teams rarely results from one person's effort.
- What this means is you may lead the team, but you need to get your peers on board too. Anyone who works closely to you—be it your manager, a project or product manager, another colleague interfacing with your team—needs to communicate in the same above way. This requires effort on your part. Here's how to lead distributed teams effectively:
- Build trust and communication: Regular video check-ins, live team meetings, and intentional relationship-building efforts.
- Set clear goals and expectations: Use shared OKRs, project timelines, and engineering scorecards for full visibility.
- Manage time zone differences: Be intentional about pacing work and finding sync times that work for everyone.
- Create a remote-first culture: Treat all team members as remote, regardless of location. Organize virtual team-building events.
- Share knowledge effectively: Ensure international team members have access to key information and decisions.
Bottom line: Leading a distributed team effectively requires a mix of the right tools, clear communication, and a strong emphasis on culture. It requires intentional work, but a successful distributed team means limitless opportunities for bringing in the right talent no matter where they're located.
Dive Deeper
I personally run a distributed team. Talent is everywhere, and this remote model allows me to hire the best talent regardless of geolocation for the most part. (Navigating legal requirements to hire globally can prove to be challenging at times, and having time zone coverage during certain hours of the day remains a requirement as I think through the distribution of my team.)
While I love leading a distributed team, it does come with its own set of challenges. Communication barriers, time zone differences, and maintaining team cohesion are just a few. Context can get lost when certain people are unable to join a meeting at a certain time. There’s no really good time to meet for everyone, so it leads to a lot of recorded meetings and asynchronous communication, meaning nuance can be lost.
Building trust and communication
Trust and communication are the foundations of a successful distributed team. When you aren’t working face-to-face every day (or even sometimes), relationship building takes a more concerted effort. Regular check-ins and updates are crucial. Little things can go a long way. If you aren’t going to be face-to-face, video chats are going to build stronger trust than just chatting on Slack or Teams. Team meetings where everyone can chat with each other live are super helpful too.
Part of building this trust is making sure institutional knowledge gets passed down effectively. When you have a US-based company, for example, and your leadership team is all based in the US, those who work internationally tend to miss out on key meetings, creating a disconnect in this knowledge sharing. Listening to a recording is only so helpful. You get the context, but you don’t feel like “a part” of it. To make up for this, I encourage someone on the leadership team to take an early meeting with the international team to speak to them live.
Setting clear goals and expectations
Regardless of geolocation, everyone on my team has access to our team’s OKRs and gantt chart. Everyone knows what’s being worked on, when it’s due, and who is working on which project. We also have an engineering scorecard that lists all of the key projects for the quarter across the entire engineering org. (We’re still a startup so this doable; I don’t expect something to be as possible at, say, Google.) This ensures everyone, no matter location or team, has full visibility into what’s expected of them.
When you have distributed team members collaborating on the same project and this team works in different time zones, you need to be very intentional about pacing out work. For example, someone based in Europe can review the PR of someone based in California, so by the time that engineer in California is online and working, their PR will already be ready to go. I also recommend trying to find a time you can sync live on projects. 8 AM in California is 5 PM in a lot of Europe. It’s not ideal for anyone, but it’s part of the distributed team game. (This is again why it’s important to set clear expectations insofar that these meetings are mandatory.)
Building a remote culture
Building a strong team culture remotely is challenging but possible. The first rule: treat everyone as if they’re remote. That means even if you work in the office occasionally with some folks on your team, they should also be treated as remote engineers just like everyone else on your team. I also recommend trying to get together as a team at least once a year if possible to build those team relationships in person. This of course requires budget approval, so if that isn’t possible, organize virtual events to do together. As a company we’ve done trivia, internet scavenger hunts, virtual escape rooms, and a variety of remote games. Ever since the start of the pandemic these games have become readily available, so see what your team is interested in.
Answering your questions
I'm on a team that is remote, but other departments are returning to office. How do I, as an IC, make sure to not get lost in the shuffle?
Return to office (RTO) rarely looks the same across an entire organization - especially a larger one. Even at Spot AI we aren’t technically fully remote, and folks who live near our Lehi or San Francisco offices are being encouraged to go into the office more frequently.
It’s easy to feel like you’re on the outside when others are meeting in-person. If the company is not going to advocate for you, you’ll need to advocate for yourself and for the others who are working remotely and may feel similarly. What does this look like in practice?
- Ask teams to make sure they’re sharing notes from discussions that may happen in-person in a public Slack (or similar) channel. Just like you miss context when folks are talking within DMs, you’ll miss context when they’re talking face-to-face without you around. Help them build the muscle to share discussions that may happen in passing.
- Speak up when you feel a decision was made in a room where you should’ve been present. It doesn’t have to be complicated, but I get that it can be uncomfortable. Don’t know what to say? Copy this: “I was catching up on the conversation you had regarding X topic where Y decision was made. I have important context that impacts this decision, and I would appreciate you including me in these discussions before a decision is made in the future. Can we get on a call to discuss this further?”
- Accept that there are going to be interesting things that happen without you present and make the most of your own space. I miss out on happy hours with my colleagues in SF, for example. When they have a scheduled happy hour, I intentionally put something on my own calendar to make sure I’m having fun even if it’s not with the team. I know it’s not the same, we can only control so much.
How can I build relationships with my in-person colleagues if I’m treating everyone as remote?
To treat everyone as remote doesn’t mean you can’t build individual relationships with those who are physically close to you. Treating everyone as remote means you’re bringing the entire team along as if you were operating in a remote environment. I still encourage you to foster your local relationships how you see fit: lunch, coffee, etc.
If you’re building stronger in-person relationships, make sure you’re spending time intentionally nurturing the relationships outside of the office, too! I only have one person on my team who I can get lunch with, but I make sure I keep my 1:1s with everyone else who isn’t local.
Curious if you have thoughts on running hybrid meetings. Should folks who are in the same building share a conference room?
It’s perfectly fine to share a conference room when others are joining in remotely so long that the conference room is equipped for a hybrid in-person/remote meeting. This means everyone in that room can be seen and heard clearly by those who are joining remotely, and you’re sticking to an agenda that keeps those who are jumping on from a remote location engaged in the conversation.
It’s easy to slip up and get caught up in face-to-face conversations when there are folks who are sitting on a Zoom or Hangouts call just watching a conversation happen, not being able to get a word in. (I’ve been that person!) If you notice this happening, put a stop to it and bring the conversation back to the broader audience.