How to lead a decentralized team

With the advent of video conferencing and chatting, the world of work has transformed into an increasingly distributed world. Teams work in different offices, in different time zones and in different cultures. In 2018, a report from Upwork found that more than two-thirds of companies have remote or distributed employees, and the number has only increased since then.

For leaders, this shift has created new opportunities to hire and grow teams, but it has also brought new challenges. Most leaders have a keen sense of how their team is doing and who is stuck or needs help, but these skills often depend on meeting people face-to-face. These moments are not always possible when moving in a distributed environment.

1. If it can be done asynchronously, do it asynchronously

If you can rely on face-to-face meetings, it's easy to discuss a lot of information in meetings. But meetings require everyone to be available at the same time, and they're expensive - they interrupt the flow of work and require multiple people to share the same time focus on a topic.

For some types of discussions, meetings are important. Video or in-person conversations allow for nuanced communication and addressing differences of opinion that are difficult to achieve over Slack or email.

But many things don't need to be discussed in person. Red status updates are a good example: Unless it's an important decision, an update can be shared just as well (and usually better) via email or another tool than doing it in person. Standups are a good example of this.

When considering what communication can be removed from meetings, you should consider whether a topic is a one-way communication (e.g. reports on status or a metric) or a two-way conversation (e.g. discussion about how to proceed). One-way and simple two-way communication is well suited for asynchronous or non-simultaneous communication. More complex two-way communication such as one-on-one conversations, team decisions, etc. are more suitable for live communication.

You can find out more about asynchronous working in this blog post .

2. Write down team processes

The best remote teams make it a point to write things down. This dogma includes writing down meeting notes, important decisions, project plans, and even processes.

In distributed teams, you can't always ask a question right away when you need it. That's why it's important to have a resource that answers common questions in a way that's easy to find! Otherwise, work slows down as employees wait for someone somewhere else to come back from lunch or start their work day.

Also, don’t forget to ensure discoverability. A good folder hierarchy helps employees find documents and add new ones.

Another note is that it should be made easy for employees to make decisions once they have the right information. A decision-making process like this one from Coinbase can help if you set it up (and write it down).

3. Make contact with each other a habit

Team meals and hallway conversations make building a personal team culture relatively easy. Without these frequent interactions, it's easy for teams to just talk about work on video calls or in email threads.

To create space for team bonding, you need to make getting together a habit. This way it happens often and without much thought. One option that some teams we work with use is to have a weekly or bi-weekly meeting to just talk about work. Some teams meet in the morning for breakfast, others for happy hour, others for lunch together. The goal is to get people talking about their lives and not just the next project.

Another option is to build emotional connection and psychological safety into your work updates. Standup is a good time for this. Ask each other a team question and ask how your colleagues are doing.

4. Listen and iterate

Developing a process that works for your team is an ongoing task. Communicate with your team that you're trying something, ask them for feedback, and make adjustments.

Scaling, adding more locations, or changing the focus of your work can impact what the right process should look like for you. Listen to your team and sense when you need to change something.

Decentralized teams are strong when they work effectively. So if you learn how to evolve and improve your process, it will pay off over time.