How do you leverage the diversity and expertise of your remote team for problem-solving and decision-making?

To be able to leverage the team's skill, you need to understand the diversity of skill. So it is important to do some kind of assessment to understand where the team sits so you can identify any gaps as well as any areas that you are well equipped. But also seeing what people are interested in because if someone in the team is interested in an area that has a gap that you can work with them to fill that gap.

Using Team Canvas is one of the best options here. In order to explore your team's strengths and areas for improvement, fostering personal growth and development will be a perfect match with this tool.

In my opinion, it’s essential to foster community and connection, prioritising open and inclusive communication to enable healthy discussion and feedback. Creating these opportunities builds trust and ensures individuals feel seen and heard. To do this, try implementing structured feedback sessions on specific topics that allow individuals to share unique perspectives. Clear guidelines and optional anonymity enable employees to feel more comfortable sharing honest opinions. Another example is promoting diversity in decision-making by involving team members with varied backgrounds and experiences – challenging group thinking. The key is to create an inclusive and supportive environment that values and respects diverse input and feedback.

In my experience, you should think about how you can create open and inclusive communication channels to encourage healthy discussion and feedback. Creating those opportunities to connect helps develop a sense of community. This can be done via virtual meetings (e.g., Zoom), chat platforms (e.g., Slack, Teams), productivity software (e.g., Microsoft 365 online) or project management tools (e.g., Asana, Miro) that enable real-time collaboration and encourage diverse perspectives.

In my experience, To promote inclusion and diversity in the workplace, we need leaders who embody the same values. You can't expect a welcoming company culture when you hire managers and leaders who are indifferent to creating a safe place for everyone in all positions. Diversity in the workplace is important and cannot be ignored. To keep your business growing in all directions, it's important to incorporate diverse opinions and perspectives into your business.

Coincidentally enough, we swear by teamwork.com. It does exactly what this post is about, getting your team to work together, beautifully. We’ be been using Teamwork since 2008, and while there are many project and task management tools out there, none have ever come close to being as business effective as Teamwork.

Here's a personal experience that illustrates how I've leveraged the diversity and expertise of my remote team: When I first started my startup, we are 3 in the team. We started hiring remote team members being intentional about hiring people with different backgrounds and experiences. One example of how this has worked is when we were trying to decide on a new marketing strategy. We had a team member with experience in traditional marketing and another team member with experience in digital marketing. By bringing their different perspectives to the table, we were able to come up with a strategy that was both effective and efficient.