Leadership & Management

The Supportive Leader:
Supporting Your Remote Team

By Teresa Chan (@TChanMD) and Sarrah Lal (@SarrahML)
Originally Published, March 23, 2020

COVID-19 has hit and within a week you've suddenly converted a bunch of your teams to remote teams! It's been quite a whirlwind and now you're heading up a new team that is digitally connected but physically distant.

Here are some resources you might consider that can be helpful for guiding others to manage your newly remote teams during these chaotic times:

This article is an excellent resource just recently published by the Harvard Business Review. It contains some really good pearls for orienting your team (and you!) to a new way of working.

Think you’re alone in your struggles adjusting to remote work? Thankfully, you’re not the only one finding yourself extra distracted! This article brings together characteristics of productive remote workers which you can emulate!

This infographic was created by Dr. Shahbaz Syed to help those who are practicing social distancing. It can be difficult to stay home all day without your usual social network, so this guide may be useful to your co-workers.

Just because your team isn't around you doesn't mean they're not doing great work! Taking a hint from our new manager Danielle Stayzer for the Continuing Professional Development office (the new combination of Continuing Health Sciences Education and Program for Faculty Development), we'd like to point out that it doesn't hurt to show your gratitude even at a distance. The highlighted blog post lists five simple ways you can show your gratitude to your remote team.

Sometimes it can be very stressful to work while entertaining children or other family all day, and the last thing your employees might want to do is cook a big meal at the end of one of these double-duty days.  Perhaps if you can share a list of places still delivering or welcoming take-out orders, it might brighten their day! Check out this link for #HamOnt.

And, that's a wrap for another quick leadership tidbit from the @MacPFD team. Stay tuned for more content soon!

Dr. Teresa Chan (@TChanMD) is an associate professor in the Division of Emergency Medicine, Department of Medicine at McMaster University.  She is the assistant dean for McMaster Faculty of Health Sciences Program for Faculty Development (@MacPFD).  She is an avid scholar in health professions education and works with the MERIT group (@MERIT_McMaster), and conducts research and scholarship within this area.

Sarrah Lal, MBA is an assistant professor in the Division of Education & Innovation (DEI) within the Department of Medicine. She is a entrepreneurship and innovation expert and directs various educational efforts within the Michael G. DeGroote Initiative for Innovation in Healthcare. Currently she is also the lead of the Leadership & Management team in the McMaster Faculty of Health Sciences Program for Faculty Development (@MacPFD).