14 Tips for Joining a Remote Team
From March 16th 2020 the UK Government asked us all to work from home if we were able to. March 16th also happened to be my first day at a new role. Working remotely, although not new for everyone, was new for me. So, I spent a bit of time thinking about how to make the most impact in a new role remotely. I came up with the things listed below which I’ve now implemented 3 times, most recently at Healx, currently a totally distributed remote company, where I started as a product manager on 8th February 2021 — I am very privileged to have had a lot of job opportunities this year. I am thrilled to have now joined a team of zoom hand wavers seen below celebrating rare disease day.
My roles are very cross functional, and I knew that meeting as many people as possible from across the business would be key. And from experience I knew that blocking out time for catch ups as well as personal thinking time would help me gain traction in roles. So my tips are very people, communications and operations focused. Most translate to suit a non-remote start as well. Please get in touch if you’d like me to talk through any of them with you.
Before I start roles I now do the following things:
1.Communicate clearly to your future manager why you are excited about the role, what you think you’ll get out of it and share any assumptions.
This comes down to starting to build a relationship with my manager that is based on clear honest communication. It also helps me to think through why I am joining the new team, letting my manager know why I’m excited helps them to learn more about me, and to start thinking about how I fit in the team and how to support me. I love raising assumptions early on too, as it helps me to properly understand the role and company situation, there are less surprises in the first weeks of the role. It also helps my manager understand what it important to me.
2. Get on calls with as many people as you will interact with in the role.
I love people, collaborating, working in teams, so I’m a massive fan of networking, as you might be able to tell from my previous blogs. I also know that a remote start means I won’t be physically bumping into people in the office, so I won’t necessarily meet as many people. As a remote starter I felt blind to the people in the organisation. To counteract this, I attempt to identify as many key people in the company that I will be interacting with in my new role, and those that I might not be. I use the company website and LinkedIn to help me do this. I reach out with a short message, to say I’m joining soon and I’d love to say hello to make the first few weeks a bit easier for me. Most people are super keen to chat, and you can learn a lot about the people from the way they react to a message like that.
Once I’ve secured a quick chat, I make sure to say up front how grateful I am for their time, and how excited I am to join the company. I also make sure to introduce myself well — succinctly but not missing key experience that could help my future colleague gain context of what I might be able to help them with. I always have this bit planned, but also work it to make sure it is relevant to the person I am chatting to. For example, if they are a scientist I go into a little more detail about the time I was a lab scientist.
Then I want to hear about them, what they do and like (personally and professionally) and if I can, what they are most excited about at the company. This gives me an insight into future things I might want to work together with them on. I am a big fan of helping people get opportunities to achieve what they want to.
Then if there is still time, I ask what they expect from me in the role I am joining, and if they have any tips for me. This is always super insightful and gives me a good idea of the situation I am soon going to join. And I often learn a few things here! Especially for when I’m joining in a new role in the company, it helps me to understand the lay of the land.
I end my asking if there’s anything else they’d like to know about me. To make sure I have left them opportunities to get more curious about me and to promote open and honest conversation in our future chats.
3. Set out your own journey map for the role.
Now that I have a bit more professional experience, I understand how helpful having a bit more of a short-term plan for each role can focus you to achieve what’s relevant for your future. I like to have a list of the things I want to achieve by 1, 3 and 6 months in the role. I can use this to share with my manager in one of our meetings.
I’m usually quite chill for the 1st month, focusing on building relationships and gathering information. Then I start to carve out my path over the next few months. I identify if there are any quick wins, where I can work closely with colleagues, or take a small project off their workload, this helps to gain colleague trust and boost my confidence. Hopefully from there I’ll get more opportunities.
You can check back on this in 3 and 6 months and be proud about how much you achieved! Or it can be a reality check to see if the role is not what you envisioned for yourself — which is a great thing to learn.
I do the following things in my first week on the job for personal operational excellence:
4. Set up your calendar how you want.
Figure out how a good day looks for you, and pro-actively make that happen. For me this means, booking out before 10am for organising my day time. Then having 2 hour blocks per day for thinking time. I put these as early as possible around company meetings I am required to attend. I don’t allow these to be booked up. When else will I get my thinking and work done otherwise? It’s common otherwise that my calendar will get booked up for chats.
I also block out lunch and set up my working hours, so it is not possible for people to book meetings with me when I’m not working. This prevents me from working over lunch or late into the evenings, leaving more time for self-preservation and relaxation! 🏝
Doing this before your calendar gets busy sets you up for a successful time in the role. Sometimes you might have to bend your ideal situation for important meetings, but try to not let that creep into your entire calendar!
5. Get familiar with the companies communication, email and wiki software.
I am so so happy that Healx use GSuite, Slack and Confluence. My favourite trio. If you aren’t familiar with the software the company uses to communicate externally and internally, then get deep into it. This will maximise all your future interactions and speed up your onboarding!
6. Use a password manager.
There are so many new things to sign up to in the world I work in now! Without a password manager I would be lost! Fewer things to remember make the first week much less stressful. And when you come back to the site a few months later, you won’t be thinking what the heck did I use as a password for this?!
7. Bookmark websites that feel important on your browser.
If I hear the words ‘It’s in the Google drive’ one more time 🙄. Typically there’s lots of information floating around on your first few weeks. Finding sites like the HR tool, wireframes, product logins, important wiki pages make it so much less stressful to find things again, and fewer things to remember!
8. Set up a personal wiki.
There is usually a lot of learning to do in your first few weeks on a new role. I recommend collecting all the information in a way that works for you. For me that’s using Confluence to build a personal wiki. I collect information stored under various categories. I generate comments on the information I collect, to test my assumptions or ask questions when I’m next chatting to a relevant colleague. This helps me feel in control of my learning, and it focuses it to one site, instead of having so many links to different sites.
9. Set yourself a to-do list.
Like number 7+8 say… there’s usually a lot to learn and do in the first few weeks of a role. If your onboarding team haven’t created a to-do list for you, make one for yourself! Keep all the bits your team send you to read here, all the people you want to meet, all the webinars you want to watch. It will help you keep track of the chaos. And it could even be used as an onboarding list for the next person who joins in your role!
To accelerate relationships with my manager and colleagues I do the following:
10. Set up a personal ‘How I Work’ profile.
This is a page on a wiki, a power point slide, or whatever you think it best. I share it with my manager and the people I will be working closely with to set the context for how I might interact with people. It helps manage peoples expectations and can start good conversations about working style.
I include my role, my why (I believe that everyone should have the opportunities to achieve their real potential, so that, together we can change the world), what I do all day, what you can come and talk to me about, a personality snapshot (from www.16personalities.com), when I work, where I work, communication norms, feedback norms, strengths I am happy to share with others, my personal areas for growth, weekly ‘must haves’, more about the things I’ve been up to in my past and present and what my interests are outside of work. But this is up for flexing — whatever you think is best and feel comfortable sharing with your team!
11. Set up calls with anyone you haven’t spoken to.
I’m a big fan of pro-actively reaching out and building relationships. In an office you might bump into colleagues naturally, but remotely you have to be the one reaching out, as it may be hard for people to know when new joiners arrive, if they don’t see you walking through a physical office. I think it makes it so much easier when in a few weeks or months you might be on a zoom call with these people, or have to work closely with them. They have the context of who you are, how you work and what you can help them with. You can also accelerate your learning about the company with these calls.
I use a similar format to point 2 as well as trying to source as much information from them about what they know about what I am going to be doing and who I am working with.
I personally prefer to do this section 1 on 1, and not in a group. It helps to build a relationship more in my opinion, and even if people repeat things, this helps me to learn.
12. Get deep with my manager in our first 1:1.
Over my professional experience so far, I have learnt a lot about ‘managing up’ and not seeing my manager as the person with all the solutions. They are often still learning too and if you don’t tell them how you like to work or what support you need, how are they going to find out? Probably slowly and painfully. I think it benefits both sides of the relationship to talk openly about how they work and what has worked well in the past.
In this discussion I include my vibes so far for week 1, how I’m feeling etc, my ‘How I Work’ profile, what success is for me personally, what I am most excited about in this quarter, examples of when I had an effective manager, what concerns I have for having a new manager that might be good to chat through, where I think I have the most opportunity to grow and how my manager can help, examples of when my manager has had effective relationship with employees, my managers pet peeves I should avoid, how would my manager describe my role and responsibilities? If my manager were in my shoes what would be their top priority? What is success for my manager?
These questions should be a two-way conversation. A time to get to know each other and set expectations. In my opinion these questions should be re-visited at least every 6 months, if you can optimise your relationship with your manager it can only be win-win.
To accelerate my learning about the company I do the following (as well as all the calls!):
13. Ask questions.
As you are learning, build a list of questions. These might be new assumptions that you’d do well to validate, or general questions about why the company was founded, what the business model is. Try to spend time to reflect on what your expectations were when you started. Is anything different to what it appeared on the outside of the company? Are there things that some people have said that don’t line up with what other people have said?
The earlier you get answers to these, the quicker you build a proper understanding of the company you are going to be spending a lot of your time at. Leaving some questions unanswered might lead to mistakes down the line, assumed knowledge by your colleagues or lack of clarity for you.
Find the forums where you are able to ask questions. Be that at company all-hands meetings, to the people you chatted to, in the internal messaging software or in your 1:1 with your manager.
Don’t be afraid to ask them! If you feel conscious you can use the excuse that you are new, but that probably only flies for a few months, so get in there quick!
14. Find buddies.
Once you’ve been on calls with the majority of people you are going to be working with closely, you usually have a gut feel for those that you connected more with, and you can tell which ones might be good to keep up frequent communications with. Maybe those that do something similar to you, or those that are close to people you need to have good relationships with. Those are the win-win relationships. You can help each other out, and hopefully it will make your work experience a little bit more fun too!
There ends my list… for now! Hope you enjoyed it. Let me know what you think, try them out, whether you are starting a new role, or you want to perfect your current role.
