Accountability. We throw the word around quite a bit in leadership circles. We use phrases like ‘holding people accountable.” To many managers, it’s the stick we use when the carrot doesn’t work. In the words of that great philosopher Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” Can we hold people … [Read more...]
The First Rule of Remote Leadership
In all the talk about hybrid work and RTO (Returning To Office for those of us who are acronym-intolerant), it’s easy to stress out. Let me remind you of a very simple rule to help guide your thinking. In The Long-Distance Leader: Rules for Remarkable Remote Leadership, we have 18 (sort of 19) rules for leading at a distance. But whether all of your people are remote, only … [Read more...]
You Need to Coach Your Stars, Too
One of the things many leaders feel we don’t do as well as we could is coach our people. Whether our team is co-located or scattered to the winds, it’s hard to find the time to coach effectively. When we do, it’s almost always focused on improving weak performance. That means we spend most of our limited time coaching the lowest-performers. But what about the rest of them? … [Read more...]
Thinking About Feedback Backwards
Offering feedback to people who aren’t located with you can be complicated. Should you send an email or get on the phone? Do you need to set up a zoom call, or will a quick shout-out on Slack get the job done? And why do they act like you’ve never told them something before when you said it just the other day? Maybe we need to think backwards when we consider offering feedback … [Read more...]
Is Your Remote Manager Doing Better Than You Are?
A recent report from Microsoft acknowledges and puts numbers to something many of us who work remotely have felt in our guts: Many remote managers are thriving with work-from-home, while their employees are feeling more stressed than ever. Microsoft's latest white paper, The Next Great Disruption is Hybrid Work-Are We Ready? is full of fascinating insights into how the last … [Read more...]