Building teams is difficult. I mean, really really difficult. It was probably easier a few years ago, when you could make the assumption that at least everybody is going to be in the same office, during most part of the day. But these days, a lot of startup teams are geographically diverse from the beginning. So how do we tackle this problem?
In this post I will lay out my philosophy on this subject:
Assume cultural differences on everything
Chances are that there will be cultural differences that affect pretty much every aspect of your working relationship. And if not cultural, personal differences. And when you are not seeing each other daily face to face, solving these issues can be much more taxing on relationships, taking longer time to resolve.
It is better to start each new relationship with the assumption that they work in a totally different way, expecting a totally different leadership/management. Then you just piece by piece go over things together, the way that you want to work together, how the leadership in your company works.
Often times we start forgetting that not every company works the same, and we start assuming that everybody is using the same methods and methodologies. We assume that bosses are bosses everywhere, and they act the same. But this could not be further from the truth.
Avoid humor but be personal
Humor is a fantastic way to build common ground - when you are with people face to face that come from the same background. Maybe you have experienced this yourself, where you try to be sarcastic with a foreigner and you realize too late that you caused a lot of confusion, or maybe you came off as obnoxious instead of funny. This has at least happened to me, more than once.
In my experience it is better to let the atmosphere be a bit “dry” in the beginning, and avoid jokes completely until you notice that the relationship has started to warm up. It is better to ask questions, everybody likes to talk about themselves, in every culture. Ask about their families, their hometowns, their hobbies. You will learn a lot. And it is key to being a good leader of a remote team - to actually know the people you are working with. Especially since they are not in the same office as you.
Crawl, Walk, Run
Don’t rush things, let people get accustomed to your way of working for a while. If you have a new team member that is from, lets say, a Former Soviet Union country - his or her english might not be perfect, they might be expecting a very strong leader that tells exactly what should be done, whom you should never question. You can’t expect them to change their behaviour in every single aspect at once. Let things take some time, and try to ease them into it by giving advice about one thing at a time.
If you start a new job and the first thing you’re met by is a long list of things that you should change in your behaviour, you will not feel welcome, and you will start doubting whether or not you have found a good company for you to work in.
Use Skype/Facetime/Hangouts
Slack is great, but it is no substitute to talking to someone and seeing their face. You need to take the time to have some virtual face-to-face conversations with everybody, and allow for 5-10 minutes of various non-work related topics each time. Remember - this is how we do when we meet with people in real life. This small talk acts as a social lubricant, that is necessary for building good working relationships. The people on the other end will never feel like they are part of a team unless they get a chance to be included in this small talk, and see some faces.
Have get togethers once a year
Skype is great, but it is no substitute to meeting someone in person. You need to take the time to have some /actual/ face-to-face conversations with everybody. And I think the key is to have dinner with everybody. I don’t know exactly what it is, but eating together as a group changes the dynamic at once, you are suddenly “together” in a different way. Lunch is not the same, because that still feels like work-time. It needs to be dinner.
It can seem like a very costly venture if you have your team all around the world, and it is a big loss of time that could be spent working to just fly out somewhere to hang a bit, but I really firmly believe this is a worthwhile investment. You get a chance to get a feel for what kind of people they all are, and treating everybody to a nice restaurant will make loyalty jump to the next level.
Remember, you are trying to build a team of geographically diverse people, not trying to keep tabs on a bunch of freelancers who are doing some work for you. And this is a point that needs to be really clear in everyones minds.