#Scheduling across time zones how to#

Even though I was 'attending' the meetings, I wasn't there for my team.

My teams were spread over 12 timezones, which means I was awake around the clock, which made me tired all the time, inevitably inefficient and then I just burnt out. Earlier in my career, I have made that mistake, and tried to attend every possible meeting. When working remotely you might feel pressured to attend meetings at all times of the day. You can't work every hour of the day and of the week. Managing expectations, especially when working remotely with an international team, is possibly one of the most important leadership skill you can develop regardless of your role or position. Setting boundaries establishes expectations. Establishing boundaries around work-life balance, around meeting cadence, and in general around your asynchronous communication methods. If you are a regular reader of our blog, you will have realised a common thread which is establishing clear boundaries. Transparency in your goals has the added benefit of providing management with visibility into the work, without having to jump on those 'checking up on you' calls. This also helps teams understand where their teammates are in the process and if they can help. This will reduce the amount of meetings you have to have.įor those expectations, and this meeting discipline to work, you will need to establish a clear communication process which gives everyone visibility into the goals and set tasks, and their progress. As questions arise, figure out a mutually agreeable time to meet and discuss specific issues. The weekly goals meeting is a good chance to give your colleagues time and room to think about the work beforehand and come up with solutions or alternatives. This will make sure every member of the team, including yourself, understand what has and will be done, regardless of the timezone they are in. At the beginning of the week, sit down with your team and establish the goals for that week. Since you will not always be able to collaborate with your teams in real-time, it is ideal that you clarify your expectations from the beginning.

#Scheduling across time zones how to#

Here are some tips for remote employees and remote companies on how to make meeting across time zones work a little bit more effectively.

Modern leaders understand that diversity breeds creativity, provides different perspectives to a global customer landscape, and allows us to ultimately build better product for a global audience.ĭespite the very obvious benefits of having diverse remote teams and colleagues, most companies are still trying to figure out how to work successfully across different timezones.

In today's workplace, diversity is more often than not the normal modus operandi. More surprisingly, only 2% of the respondents operate in a single timezone. In the 2021 State of Remote Work report by Buffer over 59%of the people interviewed reported they work with teams who are spread over 2 to 5 timezones.