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...]
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...]
Setting Up Guardrails For Working Remotely
Whether you’re a leader with a title or just someone working remotely trying to do your best, odds are you have a hard time disconnecting from your work. Remote workers, especially those who are new to it (which is an LOT of us since March), report that their biggest challenge is constantly being sucked into work-related emails, text messages and projects when they should be … [Read more...]
Onboarding New Hires in a Remote World
Much of what you’re hearing right now about remote work has focused on people who used to go into the office or plant every day and now find themselves working from home. Mostly, we are working with our same colleagues, just physically distant. But as this pandemic drags into the fifth month a lot of people are—willingly or not—changing jobs and joining new teams. A growing … [Read more...]