One of the great paradoxes of remote work is that it requires a lot of trust, yet that trust is hard to build at a distance and easily damaged. Most of us start out assuming positive intent, and that we trust in people until they show us they're more deserving of mistrust. At worst, we take a wait-and-see attitude. As we point out in both The Long-Distance Leader and … [Read more...]
Help Others to Help You Succeed
Are you training your remote teammates to get in the way of your productivity? Of all the discussions we have in our classes with long-distance workers, one of the most fruitful is when we talk about how we teach our coworkers and manager to work with us and help us succeed. Sometimes, however, they learn behaviors that are counterproductive. It sounds crazy but stick with … [Read more...]
5 Ways to Ruin a Virtual One-On-One
As leaders, we know that one-on-one communication with our team is critical. When we can’t just look out and survey the cubicle-farm to see how people are doing, the little time we get to spend with each employee becomes more precious. That’s why conducting these meetings is perhaps the most important skill a long-distance leader can have. In many ways they are just like … [Read more...]
The Worst Assumption You Can Make
With a remote team, you can’t just cast an eye over the office and see how things are going. We get visual (and sometimes verbal) cues that things are progressing nicely. Or not. But when you work apart from the members of your team you are running on a mix of trust and assumptions. Trust, of course, is good. Assumptions are necessary to function, but there’s one assumption in … [Read more...]
Fighting Isolation and Loneliness on Your Remote Team
For many people, working from home during COVID has been a big success. At least it’s worked better than many people anticipated. But the longer it goes on and the more uncertainty there is about what the return to the office will look like, or even if it will occur, the more we have to deal with a hidden and very destructive force—isolation and loneliness. As the leader, you … [Read more...]