Remote Team Coaching: Do It the Right Way

Guiding your team to do their work can be challenging if you are in a remote office set up. The lack of physical presence often makes it hard to teach your team and deliver certain points. But it is not far from viable. Here is a handy guide on how you can develop an effective remote team coaching strategy that will get everyone working more efficiently.

The challenges of remote team coaching

To better develop your strategy for coaching a virtual team, you need to understand the different challenges it comes with. There are five major challenges that you will likely encounter. By exploring these challenges with your team, you can develop a remote coaching strategy that will better suit them.

Technology

The first challenge that you need to overcome is technology. Each team will often have a preferred tech setup for online interactions. Depending on the team, this can be as simple as just a laptop and a single video conferencing app. Or it can be spread out to multiple devices, allowing teams to continuously communicate.

As such, it is your duty as the team coach to familiarize yourself with the whole setup. Explore each app and see how you can use them to connect with the team. By delving further into the feature, you can formulate a communications plan that is efficient for you and them.

Logistics

When dealing with the logistics of remote team coaching, there are several key factors you have to take into account.

Length of sessions: You need to make sure that session lengths are appropriate for the team’s schedule to avoid conference call fatigue.
Frequency: Coaching virtual teams will often require more sessions than on-site teams, usually twice every month.
Team size: Coaches need to pay special attention when teams grow beyond 12 members, as this requires extra effort to keep everyone engaged.
Timezone: for teams that work in different time zones, coaches need to look for ways to match the sessions with the different available times that each member has.
Privacy: You as the coach should emphasize the need for privacy during sessions to avoid distractions.

These logistical factors will help you develop the finer details of your coaching strategy. Remember that you will constantly be refining it, so you need to always update the team’s logistics information.

Structure

For the coaching sessions to be productive, you need to come up with a structure that the whole team can adopt easily. Here, one of your goals should be to help the team build rapport with you and each other to better guide them. Spend some time getting to know everyone to determine how to better establish that rapport.

Another thing you want to do with your virtual coaching sessions is to help your team resolve an actual issue. As such, the team needs to delve into a specific strategy for a given session while you observe. Take note of the team dynamics and list down the areas which need feedback and improvement.

The experience

An important skill that you want to teach your virtual team is asking the right questions. Show them how to ask open-ended questions and how these can help them affirm their positions better. You also need to convey the importance of active listening in shaping the questions they should ask.

It will also help to emphasize the need for team training in building a better work experience for everyone. Your team should be aware of their influence in building the protocols they will be using in the future. This encourages them to become more participatory in policy development.

Facilitation

Your ultimate goal in coaching is to get the team to start communicating better with each other. Here, you need to identify the issues that can disrupt team communications.

One voice can end up dominating the team discussions.
The silent voices are not contributing to the discussions.
Conversational chaos, where people interrupt each other
Team members not focused on the conversation
Members leaving and returning to the conversation

While some of these are general problems, the last two are closely associated with virtual teams. By helping your team identify when such issues are starting to show up, they will learn how to resolve these and keep the team conversation flowing better.

Refining your remote coaching strategy

Once you have a general strategy for coaching a virtual team based on the above challenges, you still need to refine its specific details. One particular aspect to work on is conducting your one on one sessions. These sessions are vital for the team, as each member gets the opportunity to focus more on how they can improve their skills, deal with issues, and improve their relationship with the team.

When planning one on one coaching sessions with your virtual team, consider going for a longer session. The idea here is that remote team members don’t have the luxury of showing up to your desk to ask questions. By going for a longer session, you give them the chance to ask as many questions as they want, while you also get more room to discuss with them.

Conducting your one on one sessions

It is always a good idea to open your one on one sessions by asking how each member is doing. This not only establishes a more welcoming ambiance but also lets you get more information from them for later advising. Let them talk freely for at least five minutes for them to get more settled in.

Within the coaching proper, you should have at least a prepared list of the agenda you want to go through. Some of the sections to include are:

Pending items: any questions you want to ask a member, including those unanswered from previous sessions.
Checked items: Items that have already been accomplished. Don’t delete items here, as you would want to keep track of different pointers for future discussions.
Long-term chat: These are the higher-level topics that you would want to talk about in a later long session. You can compile them during the current one on one.

Buffer says that a tool like Evernote will make tracking these agenda items a lot easier. Be sure to review all of these notes during your spare time to better prepare for remote team coaching.

When wrapping up, encourage your team members to ask additional questions. This helps the team clarify the various pointers that have been raised. You can also use this as an opportunity to ask for feedback about your remote coaching style and refine it.

It is also important that you follow through with the commitments you made at the end of the sessions. Remember that teams might find it harder to track the outcomes of their requests and concerns in a virtual work setup, so you need to be doubly diligent in providing important updates to them. This sense of accountability on your part will encourage your team to participate more in future coaching sessions.

Be more effective in coaching a virtual team

One thing that you need to keep in mind is that remote team coaching is a continuous process. As your team evolves, you need to improve your coaching techniques. Use this guide not just at the beginning but also during the later stages to ensure that your team reaches its full potential.