From the course: Managing Virtual Teams

The manager's role in connecting a remote team

From the course: Managing Virtual Teams

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The manager's role in connecting a remote team

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- If you've seen any of my other courses, you know that I have some opinions about the role of the manager on a team. To me, the main purpose of the manager is the care and feeding of the team members, making sure that they have everything they need to successfully complete their jobs. The manager may roll up their sleeves at time to pitch in, but that's not their primary purpose. Rather, they have the responsibility for monitoring overall team performance, schedule, and workload, and making sure everything comes together as planned. In addition to these tasks, the manager of a remote team has some special responsibilities. Primarily, I think the remote manager needs to act as the hub that connects their geographically disconnected team. They are the ones who are going to be the primary contact back at the command center, and will likely be the pass-through point for information flowing to the remote workers from corporate. This isn't to say I don't think there shouldn't be direct communication to the remote employees from the company. There absolutely should be, if the company wants to keep the workers engaged and informed. But the manager holds a pivotal role for their team as the intermediary for a lot of activities. This is going to require some special effort, but in the rest of this chapter, I'll talk about some of the ways the remote manager can tackle that challenge.

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