Clear expectations can make or break a remote team. Anytime there are changes to the work, or the context has shifted, there will always be an initial lack of clarity followed by unclear or unmet expectations. This can cause a lot of stress as people are not realizing what they have to do and may even be duplicating efforts. Clear expectations lead to greater confidence and trust in your work and less conflict, rework, wasted energy, and micromanagement; it is the fertile ground for successful remote work.
As a manager, you can do many things to create an incredible remote work environment for your team. Here are some categories to cover for setting clear expectations:
1. Define the team. If you’re starting a new team from the ground, or if you have inherited a team, be clear from the beginning about who is on the team and who is not, as well as the adjacent and dependent teams. All good teams have a purpose and vision so there is alignment and a compelling reason to unite and rally around. Additionally, you need to define the OKRs, goals, outcomes, tasks, the rationale for why the work matters, the big picture behind the work, and co-create team values that will guide the work. When team members can answer why they are here to do what they do and the impact they will have, they will be more engaged.
2. Define clear roles and responsibilities. Now that you’ve all agreed on your team’s purpose and vision, ensure you are all on the same page regarding everybody’s roles and responsibilities. For example, what specific tasks or perspectives do you expect each team member to contribute? Because team members may not understand why they’ve been chosen, schedule a meeting to share why each member was named to the team, each person’s unique background and valuable skillset, and clarify each member’s role. Share a game plan for how your team should interact with each other. Creating a team charter can help bring organization and introspection to your team, especially when geographically dispersed, so they always know the direction and can remain on track with their high performance.
3. Establish team norms or ways of working. In different companies and cultures, routine processes often differ widely, which confuses team members. How will you work together? What are the ways you will interact with each other? What are the values and behaviors that we all can expect? Team leaders should establish norms and provide training for best practices such as meeting formats, use of technologies and communication, and processes for decision-making and conflict.
4. Set Communication Norms. This is essential to make sure we are collaborating effectively and getting the work done. What is your communication strategy to keep everybody connected and doing great work? How many weekly formal or informal connections will you have? What are the guidelines around daily needs? How do team members set commitment-based deadlines so there is no need for follow-ups? What kinds of digital tools will you use and for what purposes? Teams often amass tools but no discussion on how those tools are used. Sometimes zoom becomes the de facto for everything, even when sharing an update can better be done over email. Remote working offers a great opportunity to co-create which tools will work best based on their purposes.
You can develop a communication charter and gain agreement on how communication will happen, what kind of messages will be exchanged, and what channels will be utilized with examples and non-examples After establishing those processes, you can gently remind the person who may be using the right tool in the right way based on the charter. So much conflict happens due to unclear expectations around communication.
Here is a list of tools with some possible purposes that might be helpful for your team for the communication component of the charter.
4A. Instant messenger. Slack is a popular remote tool, especially for direct messaging. This is best done for rapid communication and iteration without a glut of unwieldy threads like in email. Some channels can be set up to relate to specific topics or projects. There can also be non-work-related channels as a way to connect with others. For example, you can have a water cooler challenge to learn about when it is people’s birthdays or what they did over the weekend. You can have a channel for introductions for when new teams join, and they can offer a video intro so you can quickly learn people’s stories.
4B. Email. It can be used to provide more extensive information and have a record of the communication and share weekly updates or summaries of what everyone is working on to ensure alignment. Most teams do not talk about the guidelines around emails. For example, in the TO line will be those who need to respond, and in the CC line are those who need to be updated. Instruct others not to reply all when it is not necessary, so it keeps people focused on their productivity unless there are important exceptions like a decision needs to be made and you want all voices included. In that case, share that information and give them a window to weigh in before you move forward with the decision. When an email chain gets too long, start by summarizing critical points before weighing in and creating a new thread when the topic has evolved with a different focus. These may sound like trivial things, but being on the same page around communication norms and creating a frictionless experience will make the work much easier and faster.
4C. Video meetings. Zoom is a popular tool for getting people together in real-time to discuss projects and have a back-and-forth to hash out details. Other tools include Microsoft Team, Google Duo, and Webex. In your charter, you can specify how and when you use video and the guidelines for success, such as when the cameras are on and the best ways to interact. At GitHub, they do not have presentations in their meetings because they are only for interaction. When a new team member tries to present, another team member jumps in to enforce the norm, and that’s how their meeting purpose remains intact. If there is no discussion on these norms, you cannot expect people to be great team members.
4D. Phone calls. If there are a few back and forth on instant messenger or emailing and still more to hash out, it can be best to jump on the phone to discuss the issue in real-time.
4E. Document hub. Where do you store critical documents and project information? Who is responsible for keeping that information organized and updated? How can it be accessed outside the firewalls? This allows people to quickly complete their work when there is a centralized location to get what they need.
4F. Define synchronous and asynchronous work. Maybe you have organized your tools into broader categories of synchronous and asynchronous work based on the purpose. For example, some teams will use asynchronous tools when work needs to be done in real-time such as brainstorming and problem-solving. Using asynchronous work can be used for sharing info, giving status updates, adding ideas to a document, or chiming in on a proposal with a more extended deadline. The advantage of this approach is that you can catch those people who either cannot attend a meeting or do not have an invite. You can make it more inclusive and open it up to many voices to contribute their ideas and gain more visibility and possibly recognition. It also leverages flexibility for times that best serve them depending on their energy levels and personal commitments. The early risers can add comments at the beginning of the day when they do their best work, and the night owls can contribute at the end of the day for their ideal time.
5. Define response time and deadlines. What are the expectations around response times, should emails be answered within 24 hours or three days? Should people respond when they have received a message by saying, “messaged received, thanks,” or is no response necessary to reduce clutter? How about the word quickly, what does it mean? We could all have different ideas. It could mean 2 hours, 1 day, within a couple of days, or sometime this week, depending on who is interpreting the message and their position in the company. When you stay away from vague terms, it offers more clarity. A great way to do that is to include deadlines, “please respond by tomorrow 5 pm est. so the client can have their answer in the morning as promised.”
6. Define work availability and standard meeting hours. For some, the work-from-home experience has blurred boundaries between personal and professional obligations, so as a manager, it is essential to discuss work schedules with each team member to respect their time. If you know the morning time is for your family, and you will not be logging on until a specific time, share that upfront. If you know you do your best work in the evening and will be sending emails after 11:00 pm or on weekends, share that just because you are sending a message that is convenient for you, your expectation is that they do not respond until their work hours. These clear boundaries help maintain positive relationships and a healthy culture where people can comfortably focus on their work and not have to work around the clock, not have their performance measured by how quickly they respond, not get burned out, and not have to expend unnecessary energy thinking about their communication. Clear boundaries can help teams work together better and especially overcome time zone differences. For meetings, provide optimal times to overlap early and late time zones and have a predictable window. If there is no convenient time, you can have a rotation system, one month that favors one coast and another month that favors the other.
Great teams can be set up to thrive when there are clear expectations on the ways of work, including a communication strategy. It will enable people to spend more time on the work and less on figuring out the best approaches to navigate interpersonal dynamics. As a leader, the best thing you can do for your people is to take the time to set this foundation for masterful work to be built.
Quote of the day: “Treat a person as they are, and they will remain as is. Treat a person as they can and should be, and they will become as they can and should be.” -Author Stephen Covey
Q: How do you set clear and high expectations? Comment and share below; we would love to hear from you!
The next blog in this series 3/11 will focus on building community remotely.
As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with leaders to create enjoyable remote work experiences for themselves and their teams, contact me to explore this topic further.
How do you set clear expectations?