How To Build A Strong Culture With A Remote Team

How to Build a Strong Culture With a Remote Team

Five Secret Ideas to Strengthen Your Team

Establishing the right work culture is critical when you’re working remotely, even more so than when you’re in the office. I want to show you how you can create a culture that supports high performance and engagement, where employees really want to show up.

After working with some of the most innovative organizations on the planet, I can share great examples of how you can build a stronger culture within a remote team. 

We’ll talk about five states of mind that you find on a remote team. Then I’ll share five ways to engage employees with different mindsets to strengthen your culture while working remotely.

5 States of Mind

I’m talking here mainly about states of mind—not traits. Having this language and understanding different mindsets makes a huge difference in how you engage and connect with your team.

All teams have:

• Curmudgeons
• Critics
• Consumers
• Contributors
• Connectors

I’ve noticed the bulk of people fit into the critic, consumer or contributor mindsets. Curmudgeons tend to be somewhat rare—but loud. These are people who are living in a perpetual state of crankiness. Nothing you say or do is going to change their state of mind. They have a wildly negative impact on an organization’s culture, morale and motivation. 

Beyond contributors, you’ve got connectors. They are established and emerging leaders who are fantastic at helping people connect to each other and to the knowledge and ideas within an organization. They’re phenomenal at their jobs and drive others to excel. 

Knowing the different mindsets, you can use the following five methods to strengthen your team or organizational culture. This will allow you to shift out of curmudgeon, critic and consumer mindsets into the contributor and connector mentality. That’s where people in top organizations really tend to live.

Know the Remote Challenges You Face

Remote teams have to overcome additional challenges to create a contributor and connector culture. People are isolated. Particularly in a hybrid workplace, those working remotely may feel more separate. 

I sometimes think of supporting remote culture as similar to my experience healing a broken thumb as a kid.

I had to brace the broken bone. And my dad, who is in the medical field, told me to imagine that every day I kept my thumb straight, one little spider web of fractured bone grew and strengthened. Over time, you’ve got a bunch of spiderwebs, and eventually, the bone is strong enough that it heals.

The problem is every time you bend your thumb, you break those “spiderwebs.” If after day three, you are impatient and you break your thumb again, you’ve got to start over back at day zero.

Culture on a remote team is a little like that. If you meet on Zoom or another platform, and you press “End Meeting” at the bottom, it’s kind of like bending your thumb. You break those ties. Then you start to rebuild them one connection at a time. 

Lots of valuable connection and communication happens during synchronous meeting time for remote teams. But it is the mountains of asynchronous communication in between live touchpoints that maintain, support and reinforce the growth of remote culture.

You want to be intentional when you log off about offering other opportunities for connection. Develop norms around your other modes of communication, so those “spiderwebs” don’t actually break. 

To build a strong culture on a remote team, you have to create conversations that matter. I’ve found developing and rewarding a culture of asking really intentional, powerful questions is the easiest way to increase the likelihood that your synchronous time is well spent on a remote team. 

Five Ways to Improve Remote Culture

One thing to keep in mind as you’re trying to strengthen culture is that you can’t push curmudgeons to be critics or consumers. You can’t make consumers become contributors. You can only create an environment or a culture where they opt into that mindset and that space. When they do, your culture is fundamentally stronger and healthier. Morale is higher, and productivity improves when you’re surrounded by connectors and contributors.

On the contrary, being surrounded by critics and curmudgeons drags people down, especially on a remote team. To really invite curmudgeons into the game, you have to set the intention of being willing to know them.

Let Your Team Members Know …

1. “I am willing to know you.”

It’s very easy for people on a remote team to not feel seen, heard or understood. That’s why the first thing you want to make clear is that you’re willing to know them. Set this as your intention.

If you’re a leader, people on your team should feel like you know who they are. That goes beyond knowing a team member’s role or task focus. If you’re not willing to know who that team member is, it’s going to be very hard to elevate your workplace culture.

2. “I see you.”

On a regular basis, acknowledge your team members with the idea “I see and notice you.” To communicate this, you have to build rapport with your team.

One of the simplest ways to do that virtually is to be naturally curious. When we meet remotely and hop on video, we have the context of everyone’s backgrounds. Be curious. Ask, “Chad, why is your map hanging upside down?” “What kind of plant is that behind you?” Or, “Can I meet your dog?”

Being curious about someone’s environment is a very safe way to connect. You’re letting that person know, “I see you.”

3. “I hear you.”

In order to hear someone, we have to ask questions. We want to encourage openness. When I was doing research for our other book, Ask Powerful Questions, I found that kids between the age of 3 to 5 ask 300 to 400 questions per day. By comparison, adults only ask, on average, about six to 12 questions daily.

Perhaps you want to hear from your team but feel like people are disengaged. Maybe it seems like everyone is a consumer—just “passively scrolling” through each staff meeting. My question to you is, are you asking them questions? Ask questions in an intentional way that shows you value the person. Team members should know that you want to know them, you see them and you value their contribution.

Valuing individuals makes a huge difference. There’s a phenomenal study, which was conducted by the Center for Talent Innovation, now Coqual, that demonstrates this. Published in the Harvard Business Review, it found that employees who felt like they belonged at work were 3.5 times more likely to contribute to their fullest potential.

At Airbnb headquarters, there’s a graphic printed over a bunch of doors that says, “You belong here.” That kind of messaging is helpful when you work in the office. On a remote team, however, you can’t rely on a physical sign at your place of work. The message has to be embedded within the culture. You have to show people they belong in the way you engage them.

4. “I get you.”

This is really where people are saying they understand you. In order to communicate that, you have to reflectively listen. When your team says something, clarify and restate what you heard in your own words. You can even do this in chat or an email. Doing this can greatly strengthen the culture and connection within a remote team. 

You’re basically holding up a mirror to people’s words. This has a profound impact. 

5. “I am with you.”

As you use each of the tools above, you’ll strengthen connection. By showing empathy, you can make it clear to employees that “I am with you.” 

When you come from a place of empathy, team members feel like you have one foot in their reality. You can actually describe the world as they see it to some extent.

Think about what makes others feel like you’re with them when you jump on a virtual call. Do you know what a team member was doing for the three hours before the online meeting? Do you know what they’re doing for the next three hours? Have you seen their space? Have you met their kids or their dog or their cat?

Being able to understand and describe a team member’s world has a really profound impact on strengthening culture within a remote team. By developing cultures of connection and belonging, we encourage others to contribute to the conversation. When that happens, organizations succeed, and everyone benefits.