It’s
encouraging that 21st-century companies great and small have the option to
continue working even when they can’t meet in person. However, there’s one
aspect of business that often translates very poorly to a remote setting: maintaining a growth-minded company culture.

Why a Growth Mindset
Always Matters

Everyone
has heard of that old saying that if you give a man a fish you feed him for a
day, but if you teach a man to fish you feed him for a lifetime. Regardless of
your feelings towards a seafood diet, the maxim has survived the test of time
because it possesses universal application — including in the workplace.

If
you provide your employees with limited instructions, short-term goals, and a
micromanaged atmosphere, it won’t take long before your entire company culture
atrophies. Sure, you may be able to meet several benchmarks or objectives
initially, but eventually, your staff will wear out, move one, or even simply
lose interest. 

Enter
a growth mindset.

A
growth mindset revolves around the concept that continual change and adaptation are necessary for long term professional success. 

Rather
than using your staff’s current skills and knowledge in perpetuity, a growth
mindset-oriented employer deliberately fosters a culture that encourages
continual learning and innovation. This enables your workforce — and by
extension, your company — to remain on the cutting-edge of a business world
that is in a constant state of evolution and improvement.

How to Develop a Growth
Mindset in a Remote Team

While
it’s easy to recognize the importance of a growth mindset, the real challenge
comes when you attempt to maintain a culture of growth in a remote team. With
physical distance and often tenuous technology keeping you connected, it can be
difficult to stay on the same page, let alone try to grow together.

Fortunately,
there are many strategies that you can apply in order to develop and maintain a
growth mindset even in a remote team.

Maintain Two-Way Communication

Perhaps
the most important part of
maintaining a growth mindset is healthy communication. This holds even greater
importance in a remote work scenario, where staying in touch is often tentative
and difficult.

However,
if you want to maintain a culture of growth, it’s essential that you tend to
your internal communications. Make sure that clear guidelines are established
for how communication is to take place, respect work-life boundaries, and
remember that communication is a two-way street that requires active listening on the part of the employer.

Empower Your Employees

The
bedrock of a healthy company is its employees. However, if your staff feels
micromanaged, distrusted, or alienated from you, it can hobble your team’s
ability to function.

In
order to overcome this possibility, it’s important that you deliberately empower your employees. You can do this by clearly defining
responsibilities for each individual, delegating tasks, and generally shifting
responsibility and expectations onto your workers in a healthy, empowering
manner that encourages them to take control of their work.

Look for Remote Growth Opportunities

Seeking
opportunities to learn and grow is a normal part of motivating a professional team. However, when you’re managing a remote team,
you can’t necessarily gather into a conference room or hobnob in a bullpen as
you learn together.

That
leaves it to you, the employer, to actively seek out ways to grow together as a
team. This can come in the form of an online course that you take collectively,
a lecture that you set up on a Zoom call, or even a series of team building activities.

Build Trust, Even from Afar

Finally,
if you want to grow as a remote team, it’s important to develop a deep sense of
trust with your employees. Be humble, genuinely invest in your staff, and
regularly demonstrate an interest in your employee’s concerns. Show that you
care about helping them maintain work-life balance, and use delegation and
empowerment to establish a level of trust in their abilities.

In
addition, use things like hosting one-on-ones with team members, focusing on
outcomes rather than hours worked, and encouraging employee self-care. All of
these help to foster a sense of loyalty and are critical factors in building
trust and successfully managing a remote team, in the first place.

Maintaining a Growth
Mindset in the New Normal

We
live in a post-COVID world. Remote work is largely here to stay and managing
from a distance is the new normal. As such, it’s important that employers
actively take steps to recover, develop, and ultimately maintain a
growth-oriented mindset for their virtually driven operations.

Use
things like trust, empowerment, communication, and growth opportunities to knit
your team together and orient them towards a path of continual learning,
adaptation, and growth that benefits both each individual and your company as a
whole.