Why Remote Working is the future, Shauna Moran, Operate Remote

We learn more about Remote Working with Shauna Moran from Operate Remote

What is your background briefly?

My background is in business development and partnerships in eCommerce. I headed up Partnerships for Shopify in EMEA, where I was responsible for developing and executing their agency partner strategy. I worked and coached international agencies on how to effectively grow and scale their businesses. I’ve also created and scaled Partner Programs for SaaS companies.

My academic background is in Psychology, Innovation Management and Executive and Leadership Development Coaching.

Does it seem like a logical background to what you do now?

I’ve always been entrepreneurial, so it wasn’t a surprise to anyone when I created Operate Remote. It took several years to gain the ‘real-life’ experience of managing and building remote teams, academically studying communication and culture in distributed teams and training as an executive and business coach.

Even though I didn’t realise it at the time, every job, interaction, degree and experience have allowed me to be where I am today. I’m passionate about combining academic research along with proven strategies, expert coaching and real-life experience to enable my clients to not only be successful in what they do today but be successful long into the future.

I can relate and empathise with my clients, I know the complexities involved in engaging remote teams, I see the impact of poor company culture, and I understand the skills a leader needs to navigate successfully in a remote environment.

Why Remote Working is the future

1 min pitch for what you are doing now?

Using my experience and academic background in scaling remote teams at an international level, I help remote organisations who are facing challenges with communication, company culture and managing remote teams. I work with businesses that are beginning to work remotely or organisations that want to scale their distributed workforce effectively. I also work with companies who want to bridge the gap between office and remote environments.

Being a qualified coach and consultant allows me to work with my clients in two ways; I work with companies around the mindset shift that needs to happen when they work remotely, but I also work with them to create strategies and processes that will serve their remote team as they continue to scale. From working with me, companies see results such as increased productivity, profitability, and overall better team morale.

Why did you get involved with promoting remote working?

Since 2014, I’ve always worked remotely in the West of Ireland, regardless if I worked for multi-nationals or startups. I’ve built, managed and coached remote employees and teams throughout my career, and that has allowed me to see the benefits and challenges that remote working provides for individuals and companies.

Having worked fully remote and within hybrid environments, I came across multiple communication, culture and leadership issues.

I’m a life-long learner which led me back to University while working to study and research what made remote teams successful. Having consulted with many global companies, I realised that my clients needed to be empowered. They needed a change in mindset, perceptions, behaviours and beliefs to be truly successful at remote working, which lead me to qualify as an executive and leadership development coach.

Why do you think it is such a powerful idea?

The companies I work with do a great job of hiring smart and capable employees. My work focuses on getting teams to work and collaborate in new ways. We do this by challenging old mindsets that will create long-lasting impact through learning and awareness.

Remote working is still a new concept which means leaders aren’t fully equipped to transfer their people management abilities into virtual environments. Often, the success of a remote team is the sole responsibility of the leadership team, which leads to trial and errors and a waste of resources.

My clients have challenges with communication, culture and processes, which result in a decrease in team performance and eventually, employee turnover, which results in a cost to the businesses’ bottom line. These issues must be solved to empower management teams to be more productive and autonomous.

I work with leaders of remote teams in a group coaching environment helping them to define their roles within the business and help them leverage their emotional intelligence skills while identifying blind-spots that are no longer serving them.This not only solves the problems that are present in the teams today but future-proofs their business as they continue to hire remotely.

How can we change mindsets and old habits?

The first step is being able to identify what our definition of success is.

Once we’ve identified what the client wants to achieve with their business, team or within themselves, we determine what the limiting blind-spots and mindsets are.

I use positive psychology and neuroplasticity strategies, to create a safe environment which allows my clients to explore and find a deeper awareness as to how these mindsets or habits are preventing them from moving forward. Coaching involves creating new ways of thinking and problem solving, by helping my clients to gain self-awareness, clarity of  goals, achieve their development objectives, unlock their potential, and move forward with action.

For example, I’ve worked with companies who previously went remote, and because it didn’t work, they brought everyone back into an office environment. They still needed a solution to their hiring problem, and remote working provided them with access to a global talent pool. When I started working with them, they were still unsure as to whether remote would be successful for them.

From coaching the senior-level team, we found that the main issue was their mindsets, and to be successful, they needed to think and adapt in new ways. The leading blocker for them was bridging the gap between office and remote. With a new mindset shift, the management team were able to build trust, collaborate and create a successful hybrid workforce.

What tips do you have for creating the right environment for remote teams to succeed?

Having an open mind is essential for any remote team. For example, I often see trust, communication or culture issues on distributed teams. To move forward with those challenges, companies and leaders need to redefine how they build, maintain and scale trust with their employees and vice-versa. Organisations need to challenge ‘this is the way we’ve always done it’ and come with fresh perspectives and a growth mindset.

The second-biggest cause of challenges in remote teams I see is around communication. Leaders need to define and communicate their expectations for their remote teams. For example, what information do you expect from your team members and when? Do you expect that they turn their video camera on in team meetings? Remote teams need a clearly defined communication best practises guide and a strategy. Without this in place, organisations aren’t aligned, efforts are duplicated, and performance suffers.

I work with leadership teams to help them develop these strategies in their remote teams. Remote working isolation is also becoming an epidemic, leadership have added responsibilities in a remote team setting. The companies I work with do a great job at hiring smart people, so my job is to empower them to leverage their skills in a remote team environment through group coaching.

How does one adapt their company culture?

My clients often find it a challenge to translate their high-performing and inclusive company culture across multiple locations, whether it’s across offices or fully distributed teams.

Companies need to create and maintain a company culture that is authentic to their business. Remote teams need to feel invested in and supported regardless of an employee’s location.

Businesses must implement employee engagement and culture strategies specifically tailored to individuals who don’t come into an office every day. Companies need systems in place that help them review how they manage and increase engagement for both existing and new employee. They shouldn’t rule-out opportunities for remote teams to meet in person frequently and should consider the benefits of in-person interactions and team-building activities.

The social time or ‘water-cooler’ moments that would naturally happen in an office environment can be easily tailored to suit remote teams, but it requires a proactive approach and a team that is willing to engage in a new way of building more purposeful working relationships.

What tips do you have for leadership development and emotional intelligence?

Companies always test for IQ and rarely assess EQ in the hiring or training and development process. Emotional intelligence assessments and development enables leaders to leverage their existing strengths by understanding themselves, their team, and their behaviours more clearly.

EQ considers how we manage ourselves and how we manage others.

In remote team environments, everyone must have a heightened self-awareness and self-regulation when we predominantly work by ourselves every day. Assessing how we manage ourselves also considers areas like adaptability and coping mechanisms and optimism, which are skills that teams will inevitably need to grasp in remote team environments.

When we manage or interact with other people, we must consider empathy to understand and develop other people. When we can leverage understanding, we can leverage diversity, which is common in remote teams when we hire on a global level. Interpersonal relationships consider how we build relationships with other people, and in remote team environments, we need to change the ways we do this when we don’t often see our team members face to face.

Some companies experience high-employee turnover in remote team environments which results in a considerable loss of money and resources. The most common cause of this is that that emotional intelligence isn’t considered during the hiring process to hire for a remote working skill-sets.

The second most common cause is that the leadership team weren’t trained on how to manage remote employees and their performance effectively. I tell my clients that knowledge is power, and when we know better, we do better. I run emotional intelligence assessments for remote teams and run group coaching workshops on EQ leadership development.

How can people find out more about you & your work?

My website www.operateremote.com contains tons of great resources and content for businesses who are operating remote teams. You can follow me on Twitter LinkedIn or email me directly [email protected]

Happy Friday all!

I’ve created a LinkedIn group specifically for managers of distributed teams. Here’s a clip from my welcome video as to what it’s all about.

If you’re interested in joining- DM me and I’ll send an invitation your way. #remotework #leadership pic.twitter.com/tKT3G4Xdnv

— Operate Remote (@OperateRemote) September 6, 2019

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