I have enjoyed working successfully and extensively with remote teams for years now. There are many challenges to overcome, and this article does not address the logistical issues; rather it focuses on the team building factors that are the core of success. Much of this is good for all teams everywhere, but it is essential to do this on an extra level with remote teams.

Psychological safety has become the center of many conversations around the world. But is it a fad, or just another buzzword? Firsthand, I emphatically believe that it is the core of building a successful team. I’ve worked with groups that were struggling, silent, not sharing ideas, following orders, miserable, with a huge turnover rate, terrible quality of deliverables, and working overtime on projects that were deemed as failing. With a lot of love, respect, and caring about the team and the humans that the team is made of, I have watched them grow and form into powerful entities full of innovative thoughts and successful sprints. Working less, they produced more than they ever had before and became leading teams in their space.

As knowledge workers we are trained to perform our job roles mainly through academic learning. While this is essential for us to perform our tasks, there is typically no training for supervisors or managers in providing feedback to their team members. Often, performance reviews are treated as something that is required to be done by corporate rules and as such relegated to annual or bi-annual events.

What is it like for you to receive feedback once a year? What is your experience getting feedback from managers? In this blog I will share some tips that will enable you to provide feedback in a meaningful way throughout the year, not just during an official review period. This is even more critical in the VUCA world we live in now.

As agile coaches, if we don’t focus on making relationship management an integral part of our teachings, we are doing our team a major disservice.