Businesses everywhere are becoming larger and more global. This inherently increases the number of employees working remotely and the urgency to know how to lead them.
Common Remote Challenges
When I speak with leaders across the U.S., I often hear about their challenges of leading remote employees:
What are “they” doing?
How are “they” doing?
Not enough communication
Unclear expectations
What and how work is being done
Less opportunity to “check in”
I need to be connected 24/7/365
A lack of trust
Do any of these ring true for you? If so, you’re not alone. As leaders we have the responsibility to overcome these challenges. We have to take responsibility to fix it.
We Need To Be Intentional
When employees are working remotely we can still have great interaction and communication. We just have to work harder at it and do it differently than we did before.
When we work together in the same building—or down the same hallway, the communication happens serendipitously. We walk by and we say something. The next thing you know a problem is being asked about, or a problem is being solved. Trust is getting built with these small interactions over time. Relationships are improved and productivity is grown. The same can happen with remote teams. We just do it with more intentionality.
5 Skills To Sharpen
Here are some traits of Long-Distance Leaders that I found in the book the Long-Distance Leader.
Communication- Our ability and need to communicate grows as our teams become remote. I’ve never worked in an organization (even without remote teams) that ever said we communicate too much. All organizations need more communication. When you add the remote piece in, it gets even more important. And necessary. We can’t just assume it’s happening. We need to work on it.
Relationship building skills—People want to follow people that they know, like, and trust. If we don’t have a relationship with the people who lead us, we will be less engaged and less satisfied. It’s important for leaders to have strong relationships with their teams. At a distance it’s even more important. There are specific things we need to think about doing and specific times we need to think about doing it. We can’t take it for granted.
Higher EQ- All of the things you think that might be called ‘soft skills’ take on a greater meaning because we have fewer interactions when our employees work remotely. Each of those interactions take on a greater importance and role. A lot of it is being mediated by technology. We need to work on our Emotional Intelligence skills because they play a bigger role.
Technology skills - If I’m leading at a distance there are some technology skills I better have. No one wants to be on a phone or a laptop when a meeting is supposed to begin and not be connected to the group. Or think about the time that is wasted when the leader is fumbling during a meeting to open a document or find something and the team is just waiting.
Greater intentionality –This is probably the most important on the list. Leaders must be more intentional. We allow more room for error when we see people in the hallway or see them 4-5 times during the day. When we see people casually we are building trust. It’s easier to engage our team and easier to know if they’re not engaged when we see them, are around them, or we walk in from the parking lot with them.
So when our folks are remote, either part of the time or all of the time, we’ve got to be more intentional. We need to be thinking about what we need to do, planning it out, making the other skills on this list a part of our day. We can’t walk through the day the way we used to do and try to get the same results. Even if we’re an excellent leader. We’ve got to do some things differently.
There are probably more traits that could be on the list, but if you do these 5 well, you will be in better shape than most. When we do these better, we will lead at a distance better.