How to Rebuild Team Connection When Everyone Works Remotely

If you run a sizeable team and some or all of them are working remotely, you have probably felt the friction of trying to lead people you can no longer read in a room. The informal check-ins, the corridor conversations, the sense of what is actually going on across the floor — all of that disappeared, and what replaced it has not been good enough.

Even as hybrid arrangements have settled in, the communication problem has not gone away. Some people are in the office, others are not, and meetings now have participants who are physically present alongside those joining on a screen. That split creates its own awkwardness, and it is not something that will sort itself out over time. It needs a deliberate approach.

I was speaking to a client a couple of weeks ago — let's call him Kevin — and he was feeling exactly this. Before COVID he managed by walking around, dropping by people's desks, asking how they were, passing thoughts on in corridors and lunchrooms. He got on well with his team and liked spending time with them.

Kevin was not the most technically confident leader. He had started writing down all his questions in lists for each team member, then working through them whenever he got someone on a virtual call. This was usually squeezed in at the end of another meeting, making everyone late for their next one, or it took over the meeting entirely.

It was stressful for him because it sat outside his normal working style and he felt disconnected. For his team, those calls had started to feel like an interrogation. Because many of Kevin's questions were time-sensitive, people were scrambling for answers under compressed timelines, trying to take in what he was asking while their minds were already on the next meeting.

Kevin did not want to default to email either. He had identified that tone and intent are hard to convey in written words, his team's inboxes were already overloaded, and some of his questions were casual enough that an email felt wrong for them. He needed a way to have quick, impromptu conversations — but in a form that worked remotely.

So how did he solve this? I have been teaching my virtual meeting masterclass participants to use existing tools in new ways. Research carried out by UCLA found that "the greatest bonding effect occurred during in-person interaction, followed by video chat, audio chat, and IM in that order." The challenge was to create quick video or voice messages rather than emails, texts or long lists, using tools people already knew so there was no learning curve to speak of.

Most of us use WhatsApp to message friends and family, and I recommend using its video and voice message functions as a way to check in with your team. You can set up groups or connect with people individually for quick questions.

To send a voice message, start a chat with someone in WhatsApp, hold down the microphone button pictured below, and dictate your message.

For a quick video message, tap the camera button, hold down the shutter button in selfie mode, then press send. It is straightforward, and it is more human than an email. Your team can also watch or listen back at a moment that suits them, making sure they have caught all the detail before they respond.

Kevin talked through this approach with his whole team, explained why he was proposing WhatsApp, and most of them were keen to try it. He could connect with them as a group and send individual notes to people regularly.

A few weeks on, he reported considerably lower anxiety because he felt more connected and could ask questions when they were fresh in his mind. His team said meetings felt less pressured, and they appreciated the personal touch of seeing his face and hearing his voice. They felt more connected too.

It was not a complicated fix, but once Kevin adopted WhatsApp messaging he noticed others in the team starting to send humorous messages around the group and encourage each other. It had become reminiscent of the office banter from before, in a new form.

What tools have you had success with in reconnecting with your team? I would love to hear about it.

MENTAL HEALTH NOTE — If you are feeling alone or overly worried about things right now, please reach out to me directly for a chat. I am here to listen and want you to know you have someone to connect with who cares.

If this sounds like your week

Your managers are not the problem. They are where the problem is stuck.

When your last leadership spend was signed off, did anyone go back to those managers' bosses and ask what changed? That question is the JBL Outcome Standard, and it is how I work.

• Find the friction. A short diagnostic that shows which decisions are stalling, and at what level.
• Am I the bottleneck? Ten questions on where your week is actually going.
• How I work with GMs. Six weeks, one hour a week, up to twelve of your managers, scored by their own bosses.
• Beat Burnout, Boost Performance. The book.
• The High Performance Leader podcast.

Managers I work with reclaim around four hours a week, and their bosses score the change 8.75 out of 10. Would it be a crazy idea to find out how we did this? Book a scoping call.

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