I have to make a daily conscious effort to remember that my outsourced team is not a room full of robots thousands of kilometers away from me. This is not because I am a mean person, but often in the urgency of the daily job I can simply assign tasks through my Basecamp project collaboration system and come back at the end of the day and just see them all done.

It can be robotic and it can be like a factory without much human interaction. So I ensure that I do make a daily effort to bring that human touch into our team. Everybody has their own style for how they relate to people so I’m just going to give you my three suggestions on how I do it.

 

Be a part of their life

In a previous job I had a manager that was like no other manager. This person knew the name of my wife, knew our birthdates, knew everything about our life and didn’t just know me as an employee. When this manager left the handover document they gave to the new manager firstly talked all about the important life attributes of their staff and not about their job or how they relate to the business.

I believe this was an important lesson in management. To be a part of my staff’s life, to not know them as the graphic designer or the assistant or the researcher but to know them individually by name and know the things that are important to them. To know about their hobbies, family, the things that they did on the weekend, be a part of their life so that you have something to relate to them about.

In my team, I unintentionally hired a good amount of team members that all played guitar and all enjoyed playing basketball, and these are two things that I enjoy as hobbies as well. It made it easy to relate to them on a level that was not just about a working relationship. Having something to ask them on Monday morning about what they did on the weekend is a great way to bring that human touch into your working environment.

 

Join in the conversation on social networks

All my team members are Facebook friends of mine and we follow each other on Twitter. I’m sure when the next social network craze appears, we will all connect on that platform as well. This allows me to open my life up to them as well as being able to interact with them about their life. To see new photos, videos and status updates that I can comment on and talk with them about helps all of us to get to know each other better.

Having photos is a great asset as that I can get to know my team and not as an instant messenger sign-on, or a profile photo. I get to see them experiencing their life and get to know them better than I would over an instant messenger.

 

Don’t make it all about business

Everyone enjoys a chat around the water cooler in the office and so the same should happen in your virtual working environment. Don’t always talk about work but keep the conversation happening about things that happen in our lives, and just getting to know each other.

Something I find very frustrating is when I say to one of my team members “Hi, how are you?” and their reply is to give me an update on their work. I have to reply and say to them “I didn’t ask you about the work, I asked about you”. That’s a good indication to me that I need to spend some more time connecting with that person on a level that is not just about a working relationship.

One little thing I always like to do is when some of my team say “I just got back from lunch” or “I‘m just going to have my lunch”, is to ask them what they ate. At first they find it humorous and they think it is a joke, but after a while it becomes a great conversation starter to share the things that we ate for our meal.  Even if I can’t find something to relate to my team about,  such as a hobby or stage of life, there is one thing that is common amongst  us all in the world – we all enjoy our lunch.

 

Connecting with people on a level that goes beyond instant messaging, or just a working relationship, I believe is very important to having a productive and successful team. Being able to consider the majority of my staff as friends means that there is more trust between us all, there is more understanding when situations arise and it is also easier for me to ask for a big commitment at times there’s something urgent arises.