🎒 Microlesson

🪞 Reflect

What do you do when your remote or hybrid team’s projects aren’t progressing as quickly as they should? 

💡 Concept

Even the best distributed teams hit roadblocks. A project that was rolling smoothly last week suddenly stalls. Deadlines slip. Messages get missed. And no one’s quite sure who’s waiting on whom. 

When momentum slows, it often signals a breakdown in one or more core areas: communication, accountability, clear expectations, or asynchronous workflows.

The good news? Each of these is fixable. In this microlesson, we’ll show you how to spot the root cause of delays—and what to do to get your project (and your team) back in motion.

🚘 Drive accountability from anywhere.

It can be tricky to foster accountability in remote and hybrid teams, where visibility is low and communication is often asynchronous. But accountability doesn’t require hovering—it means setting clear expectations, tracking progress transparently, and fostering a culture where people own their work. Learn more here.

✅ Get clear on task and project requirements.

Developing a shared “definition of done” (or DoD) ensures that everyone agrees on the criteria for a task to be considered complete. Such an agreement sets expectations, reduces ambiguity, and fosters accountability across teams. Learn more here. 

🛑 Stop using meetings to drive project progress. 

Many project teams schedule recurring check-ins to make sure that projects move forward. But relying heavily on meetings often has the opposite effect: it slows everything down. Learn how to use async communication instead of meetings in order to maintain momentum.

👻 Combat ghosting in remote teams. 

Ghosting can happen in any type of work situation, but remote and async-first teams are particularly vulnerable. It’s easier for communication breakdowns to develop since team members don’t necessarily see each other every day, and delayed responses are common. Learn how to prevent ghosting in distributed teams.

🎬 Take Action

• Choose one of the actions listed in this microlesson and commit to trying it. 

• Complete your action within the next two weeks. 

• Reflect on the impact that your action has. 

• Share your results.

🧠 Keep Learning

Learn more about how to manage effective distributed teams in Leadplaceless. 

✅ Check In

🎁 Learn with your team!

Refer our weekly microlessons to your team members to learn as a group! Just follow the instructions in the section below to get started.