Even before the pandemic, people have been curious about learning remote project management skills. But now that numerous businesses are choosing to stick with remote work for good, or at least a flexible hybrid work schedule, remote project management skills feel more essential than ever. In this article, I’ll go through some of the most relevant — and often ignored — skills to help project managers succeed in these new work environments.
You may be thinking that you already have good project management skills, so they should also apply to remote projects as well, right? Well, sort of. Let’s say that you want to be part of a competitive driving sport. You’re positive you are a good driver, and you have great reflexes, and a fantastic feel for the machine whenever you’re behind the wheel. Does that mean you have all the skills you need to become a Nascar or Formula 1 race driver? Of course not. You need to consider your driver skillset as a starting point, and layer more specific knowledge on top of it to match your new pursuit.
That’s the essence of what we’re going to cover today — what specific remote project management skills to layer on top of your current knowledge as a project manager. Because being in an office shifts a persons’ behavior and expectations so much, there’s a lot that needs to change when a team goes remote. Sharing common knowledge between co-workers, for one thing, stops happening passively and needs to be planned for and systematized. Non-verbal communication cues are no longer in play. And these changes make the use of technology like unified communications systems crucial to achieve the best outcomes.
These changes don’t necessarily make remote work worse, but they do make it different — and a project manager needs to adjust accordingly.
Building Your Remote Project Management Skill Stack
A lot of the following skills are either directly or tangentially related to improving communication, and that’s not an accident. Communication is the lifeblood of remote teams, which has been proven over and over again in fully remote companies like ours at Think Remote. With that being said, remote project management skills largely focus on facilitating a clear flow of information between team members.
So if you’re looking for a general theme to improve upon, that’s it: communication. When something is not working out in the team, and you’re not sure what’s the problem, default to assuming it is a communication problem. With that being said, here are 3 remote project management skills that can help your team succeed, no matter where you’re working.
1. Good Writing
If you’re wondering how writing is applicable to project management, stop right there. If your team is remote, you are now in the writing business. The reason is simple: in a remote team, over 80% of communication happens in writing. But even the most brilliant people tend to leave information out of their written communication. It’s common for people to under-communicate and leave blanks in their writing, because they assume everyone else has the same information they do.
When you leave out context like this, you are expecting the people who read your words to be able also to read your mind as well. This is why it’s important to double down on your writing. The next time you type something in your project management software or message someone in team’s virtual chat, read it out loud to yourself. Does the sentence contain every bit of relevant information? Or is it lacking context? Is the person or people on the receiving end aware of the context?
For example, every other day I get a message along the lines of: “I need urgent input on how to handle the Europe event.”
Without any more information, it’s easy to react like “What Europe event? There was a Europe event?! ARE WE GOING TO EUROPE?!” But with more context, it would be obvious that this Europe event is actually referring to an online event the team discussed in the previous marketing meeting. This is one example how under-communicating can lead to confusion, and in some cases, even panic. So whenever you’re crafting written language, make sure to be extra diligent with details, and nurture your team to do the same.
2. Non-Threatening Communication
Let’s clear up the first misconception here: this is not just about not swearing. In fact, swearing in the workplace isn’t necessarily inappropriate, so long as it’s done in good humor, isn’t offensive, and falls within your office rules. And that’s a key point: non-threatening communication is equally about the words you use and the context they are used in.
Let’s imagine that you say the following to someone working under you:
“I think you didn’t look at my previous comments.”
This might not seem problematic at first, but let’s break it down a bit. “I think” implies that you have already made up your mind about something. It’s not as definitive as “I see” or “I know,” but it is halfway there. There’s not a lot of wiggle room. “You didn’t look” is essentially saying that the person did something consciously and willingly. That’s the default assumption. So, you are cornering the person and placing the burden of the problem on them. Now you can see why someone is likely to get defensive when you use a sentence this way.
So how can we change the wording to make it less threatening? Consider this instead:
“It looks like you missed my previous comments.”
I think you’ll agree this sentence is much less threatening. This is because it lends weight to different words than the first example. “It looks” is a much softer descriptive of a situation than “I think.” After all, looks can be deceiving. On the other hand, “missing” something is a passive action. Anyone can miss stuff! It happens! They are still responsible for missing it, but they aren’t guilty.
Don’t dismiss being mindful of the language you use as catering to people who really should be more “thick-skinned.” After all, when you work with remote teams, you are likely working with a diverse mix of cultures. Different cultures “read” the same words — even English words — in very different ways. What sounds like a casual remark to an Eastern-European might look like an insult to someone from northern India. This is why your remote project management skills should include recognizing cultural differences and utilizing that knowledge to communicate accordingly.
3. Timezone Logistics
If there’s something much more straightforward about the office, it’s the fact that everyone (or almost everyone) starts and stops at the same time. In a remote team, you’re more likely to have people spread across multiple timezones. That distribution leads to a high-risk, high-reward scenario. If the time differences aren’t ideal, you can be in a situation where someone hands off a task, and the next person in the chain takes a full day to pick it back up. Alternatively, this can work to a team’s benefit, where a specific task is worked on around the clock because when one person is closing their day, another one is beginning it.
Your remote project management skills are the difference between those two scenarios. When working across timezones, it’s necessary to cultivate an awareness of the following 3 buckets of information:
- What everyone is doing
- How every task ties together into the larger picture
- When each person is available to work
When everyone is informed and understands how their tasks fit into the larger picture, it’s much easier to coordinate the handoff of tasks. Imagine how productive your remote team can be if one person is working while another is sleeping? If that’s not a project management superpower, I don’t know what is.
The Future of Project Management
After 2020, the reality of how work has shifted for almost everyone across the world. Learning about remote project management skills went from being a curiosity to being a necessity. Think about it — would you want to limit your career to exclusively working with companies that don’t do remote work? Of course not, and others feel the same way.
The good news is that these are skills that anyone can develop, and it is pretty rewarding to do so. Every facet of your professional and personal life can capitalize on improved communication and a profound awareness of how you use your words and allocate your time. And once you manage to apply those skills consistently while leading a team, the quality of their output will soar.
This is a guest post by Luis Magalhães, founder and editor-in-chief at Thinkremote. Louis writes about how to build and manage remote teams, as well as the benefits of hiring remote workers.
