The recipe for making deeper connections with your team.

At Remote Social, our mission has always been about bringing teams together. The work we do is underscored by the goal of helping you put your team culture first. After all, culture is the biggest lever that any organisation has to drive performance. When you put your team culture first, the customer experience and bottom line will take care of themselves. This is why we're committed to creating an experience and environment that provides teams with the tools to be purpose-driven and successful.

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This is also why we’re so excited to announce the launch of our latest tool, Check-in! Backed by neuroscience, we designed Check-in to help teams build rapport and humanise their meetings. By cultivating this sense of openness and empathy, it transitions a team from a collection of individuals to an interdependent team – reducing conflicts and increasing efficiency.

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If there’s anything we’ve learnt from the teams we work with, the most successful leaders recognise the power of:

• humanity at work and,
• building an employee experience that people love.

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New ways of work require new approaches to help leaders connect with their team. It’s time we lean away from the traditional leadership approach of ‘command and control’, and into ‘connect and communicate’ –  which is what Check-in is all about.

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Now, let’s look at the perfect cocktail to forge deeper connections within your team.

1. Practice active listening

Your team catchups provide the best opportunity to ‘decipher' everyone’s current mood and state of mind. Does one of your team members sound stressed? Hesitant? What could that be signaling? By practicing active listening, you will start to notice engagement levels during a call and observe physical reactions to what’s being said.‍

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How Check-in can help:‍

It might be tough to ‘decode’ your team member’s voice tone, pitch, or words to capture how they’re really feeling. Check-in prompts participants to choose image cards that help convey a visual metaphor for their current mood and state of mind.

2. Delve further

The empathetic response is to find out if there are any work (or non-work) distractions that might be affecting your team members' engagement, rather than passing judgments or assumptions. Pose open, supportive questions to draw out details of how they’re coping. Below are some questions that show concern and encourages trust:

• “Is there anything going on that I can help with?”
• “Are you doing okay?”
• “Is there anything keeping you from moving forward?”

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How Check-in can help:

Participants are able to better frame their thoughts and feelings with the cards they choose. This removes mental barriers and reduces inhibitions for people to freely share about their current state - whether it’s work-related or not - and provides an opportunity for leaders to reach out.

3. Be accessible

When you make yourself more approachable as a remote leader, you’re naturally creating a space for empathetic interactions. There are many ways to make yourself more accessible - you could launch ‘Ask Me Anything’ sessions or check in on team members directly on Slack. No matter which approach you take, remember that the goal is to foster an empathetic environment where everyone feels comfortable and encouraged to communicate openly.

How Check-in can help

Check-in gets more effective when used regularly over time. You will notice your team members feeling more comfortable with sharing deeper, more personal stories, shaping these Check-in sessions into a safe space for everyone. This ultimately influences a greater sense of empathy for one another.

Empathy and being approachable may not be brand new skills, but they certainly have a new level of importance in this new era of work as we embrace the benefits of creating stronger connections. With these levers to improve motivation, performance, and employee retention, leaders can better manage, motivate, and support employees wherever they are working.