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5 effective ways to use video in the management of people

Apr 20, 2022

As the Director of SEO at , you'd think that people management via video is an automatic process nowit's as easy as walking at a desk of a coworker for an informal chat or casual bump-in in the coffee room.

Like the vast majority of remote workers, I run across challenges when it comes to forming connections, making sure messages don't get lost, as well as recovering from screen fatigue.

Thankfully, in the past few years of growing as a group, I've discovered a few helpful tips and techniques to managing and achieving our goals as a team via videos -- and having a blast, too.

In this article:

The difficulty of managing remote teams

Organizations naturally ebb and flow as they scale up, expand out, and evolve according to the needs of business as well as the vision.

The rapid growth of a company can bring many issues, particularly when working remotely. A lot of team leaders have trouble maintaining the binding agents that maintain everyone's compliance.
These challenges are:

  • Integrating many different people to the workflow and process at once
  • Assuring team members are moving towards their own career goals
  • Making myself available for urgent concerns, questions or urgent needs
  • Offering timely and helpful feedback via a distance using authenticity and nuance
  • Making connections with a remote team and workforce members that I had only met for the first time remotely

In addition, with everything happening, we would like to make sure that everybody gets enough focus time, without constant meeting, contacts switching and the ever-growing stream of Slack messages!

If there's a thing that I'd like you to remember, it's this: video can help bridge the gap in intimacy as office conversations suddenly turn remote.

Video allows new hires and team members to get acquainted to our process while freeing up deep work time. This also lets us do more than we have if we were sharing an office space (though we do miss the occasional coffee runs! ).

So let's take a look at the 5 people managing skills required for a remote management team.

Five skills in management of people to nail remote work

Make use of meetings to help focus greater goals

There are a lot of regularly scheduled meetings while working remotely.

My team has an ongoing standup on Slack, weekly 1:1s with each member of the team, and each two-month period, these meetings are extended to more extensive conversations about career advancement.

It's a lot. It's almost too much.

However, these meetings also balance what's going on, both the specific initiatives and products we're launching, and to strengthen the overall goals of the business as well as its employees.

During company all-hands, such as the one above, leaders remind us of our goals for the company throughout the year. Although we've probably looked at these presentations a thousand times, they help remind our of the overall company focus and keeps us aligned.

And while successful people managers are able to run their department and run it, our first job is to assist the team, and ensure that they're on the right track to success.

That's why it's important to talk to each team of members. It's not just about what they're working on, but also where their professional career is headed and if they're progressing towards their career targets, and also what we can do to eliminate roadblocks to unlock their full potential.

Form personal connections with Ice breakers

Maintaining the same level of relaxed, casual conversation in the office is an issue when you're working from home.

If meetings are conducted via video, participants tend to be more focused. It's not in itself a negative thing, but it doesn't help with getting to know individuals on a more personal depth.

For team weeklies, we give our first five minutes to icebreakers.

Ice breakers are the fun, get-to-know-you questions. The team rotates with each team member bringing an ice breaker question every week. It helps new members feel part of the team environment and softens employees into working mode on a Monday morning.

To illustrate Here are some of our top ice-breakers

  • What's the most terrifying thing you've ever done just to be fun?
  • What's your favorite movie? And what would you say is your most favored to listen to?
  • Are you able to name a favourite wine and cheese or chocolate pairing?
  • What's the best thing you purchased in 2021?
  • What's your go-to café shop or restaurant or wine/beer order?

It's also important to spend time just chatting about non-work connected things like sharing books, or exchanging news on how things are going beyond the office.

There's a lot of goodwill you can create just when you meet people in the kitchen, and bonding over a show you're both watching or a company you both like.

There's a concern of losing personal intimacy when you're not physically being in a room with one another. However, video does have an own method of intimacy.

Now, you're spending moments with others in the comfort of their homesseveral times each week. The people you interact with are seeing their lives in a new way that you did before. It's a fantastic opportunity to discover something fresh from someone you wouldn't be able to without keeping their limitations.

Focus time is a must.

The most productive work is done when people are heads-down at their desks, empowered to take their time and work according to their own schedules, without constant distractions.

Remote working has a benefit when it comes to security: no chance of getting cornered while you're heading to the bathroom or having your colleague walk in unannounced in front of your workstation.

As a manager, it is my job to would like people to be decisive and deliberate with their time.
Make sure your team has a schedule for "focus time" in their calendars. They should also make it clear to others through their Slack status or the auto-reply to emails, "I'm in focus time. If you've got a question I'll give you the answer around 3pm."

Fully open: I do this too! But I've also given my team permission to make an announcement if they're having trouble and urgently need me so I'm able make sure they're okay.

Send feedback immediately, with specifics, and carefully

Everyone appreciates constructive feedback. This means that their boss truly is interested in how they're performing and has taken an effort to support them to achieve their objectives.

But the delivery requires balance because of the ease it can be for someone to get their egos tied to the information they're getting.

Feedback is a difficult thing to find in a distant environment. A lot of things happen synchronously.

In the beginning, I may lightly tap someone's desk for a quick debrief on how their presentation went, and we could discuss it in person, with more clarity and nuance.

Now, I prioritize delivering constructive feedback and tips with care, without tearing away anyone's confidence in the quality of their work.

It is important to note down the presentations so that they are as precise as possible. I enjoy using this time to create opportunities to strengthen relationships as well as reinforce goals of what we're trying to achieve.

Feedback that is most beneficial comes at the exact moment as you can, which means it's still relevant to whoever you're talking to, and doesn't look like that you've been debating your criticism for months.

Pro tip: If you know that a member of your team is particularly sensitive to feedback, or most likely to believe that they are that they are the worse (as everyone does at times! ) Try sending an email to tell them, "This is good, I promise!" or layer on honest positive feedback.

Delegate meetings

According to my time tracker My time tracker shows that I work 18-20 hours per week attending meetings. At one point I was often managing my group's meeting.

This not only caused massive screen fatigue, it was also tough to stay driving the car and in the center of the screen.

Now, I've started handing off meetings to members of the team. The idea is to let other team members develop their leadership abilities while I can participate as an attending.

We have a lot of great leaders and calling on them to take charge of regular stand-ups, or even activities that break the ice can help to develop new abilities that can ease a lot of the mental load off the boss.

Three strategies to employ for effective management of people

These are the methods we employ video to power our team's collaboration and assist everyone in doing the best job they can.

Record

 We use Record to connect with colleagues across time zones, asynchronously through video.

This allows us to be seated with someone to give them our full attention and concern without needing someone else to be there.

 We've integrated it into our Asana routine.

This means that should I wish to talk about a task, or leave a comment, I can just hit "Record" in Asana to save the recording as a playable video to ensure that anyone who is watching doesn't need to leave the flow.

 Information can be shared widely or save it to replay it.

This is particularly helpful in the beginning when we had to onboard many new members of our team at the same time and were asked the same question frequently, like "Where can I find this file?" or "Can you guide me through this procedure?"

In these instances the best option is to take a screen recording of the response, then save the answer to a library, where it will be available to those who need to locate that file again.

Video Library

Our onboarding and training videos into various folders. We have libraries that are used for different projects, allowing everyone to locate the video resources they're searching for.

Different companies could have separate libraries for each department including one for your Marketing team and another for your Sales team. It's incredibly easy to locate the system which is suitable for your needs.

Live streaming

Chat in particular helps keep employees engaged, and auto-closed captions keep people across the globe, particularly if their first language isn't English and they aren't aware of what's going on. Furthermore, the possibility to record clips in advance allows us all to work across the globe.

Lead Remote teams.

That's it!

Working remotely isn't without its own challenges -- particularly if you enjoy the personal aspects of team-building as well as getting to know the people you work with.

Video also gives us fresh possibilities to make meaningful connections around the world that could not be possible if we were in the office with each other. All it depends on is the way you utilize the technology.