By Chuck Chapman, Content Strategy Coordinator One of the foundations of being a remote leader is effective online communication. As we've well documented on this site and in The Long-Distance Leader, this is one of the principle leadership challenges for those heading up remote teams. Simply put, communicating remotely just isn't the same as communicating in co-located … [Read more...]
History Shows Why Succession Planning on Remote Teams Matters
Here’s a question I bet you’ve never been asked before: What would happen to your team’s work if the boss suddenly wound up dead in a pickle barrel? This is kind of a morbid (okay, downright weird) question, but on remote teams we seldom have a good plan in place for who does what if something major happens. And there’s a historical lesson here for why succession planning is … [Read more...]
How to Delegate to Remote Team Members
If we ask managers, “should you delegate tasks to remote team members?” the answer is almost always a resounding, "Yes!" After all, they are smart, talented people and we’re paying them to add value to the team— of course we should delegate to them. The reality doesn’t always reflect this, though. Many remote workers complain that the plum assignments go to “those suck-ups in … [Read more...]
Good Coaching Matters, No Matter Where Your Team Is
When we talk to managers around the world about what they feel they could improve on, the one area they all say they could improve on is “coaching.” It’s hard to do and doesn’t come naturally to many of us. So, it seems a bit like piling-on to point out that the odds are pretty good you do a better job coaching the people you share a workplace with than you do with the ones who … [Read more...]
Coaching and Feedback at a Distance
When we talk to leaders of teams, the one part of the job most feel they could do a better job of is coaching their people. This feeling of “not quite being as good as we could be” is heightened when we work remotely from the people we should be developing. On the surface this requires frequent, targeted, purposeful conversations. You can have those remotely, so why does … [Read more...]