I asked twitter: I'm asking you, How do you help people who want to help you get your work done? Email me. I want to know.
Gustavo Ferreira
- personal 1-to-1 conversations about visions and feelings (excitement/doubts/fears/anxiety/etc)
- finding overlaps between other people's visions and my own, so there's just 'the work'
- being skilled, creative, generous, fair, hard-working etc so others are excited about working with me
not tools-based at all... very motivational and personal IMHO.
Here's a quote 
from Peter Drucker which I find inspiring:
The model for management that we have right now is the opera. The conductor of an opera has a very large number of different groups that he has to pull together. The soloists, the chorus, the ballet, the orchestra, all have to come together - but they have a common score. What we are increasingly talking about today are diversified groups that have to write the score while they perform.
What you need now is a good jazz group. And if you want to have a really good jazz group, how large can it be? How large can it be when you have people who improvise on their own and the group realizes that the trumpet player is now playing his solo and everybody needs to stop and support him? You can use seven to nine people - maximum. If you get more, you have to score.
Jeremy Deininger
I would treat this like I would run any opensource group. Communication channels are king. Have a kickoff summit week in person. Then go back to "offsite" mode when you need to get work done for yourself. Group chat-rooms facilitate knowledge dissemination. Chat bots (I've had success with both IRC and skype group chats) can facilitate the communication in areas where people might be slightly lacking and provide an engaging experience in the group chat.
For example. Chat bots that collect daily "standup status" over chat are in use at some development shops already. This bot could be smart and adjust the time it collects the status to when it sees you go from away->online. That way it's the bot who ensures communication is happening even if things get busy. Communication == more work getting done.
Anyway, I could talk all day about this type of thing.. The last few development shops I've worked for I spent a lot of time facilitating communication and teaching people the things they needed to know to work on the same projects that I built and/or inherited. 3 years of which was full-time offsite.
Confused
Happy to do so, but I’m not sure I understand the question.
Work as in project work? software work? sharing and clarifying ideas?
Do you mean help them help me, or help them be happy & fulfilled, or what?