Remote Management: Hitting Reset and Managing Effectively

Nothing like an overnight shift to a remote workforce to hit reset on what it means to be a strong manager. While there’s plenty on the news to be worried about, I have to say, I’m excited for what this means for managers and leaders.

The thing about remote management is that it forces us to be better. It forces us to do the things we know we should do and, for loads of reasons, we don’t always actually do when we work in the same space.  

We know we should pause and connect, but what’s our reality in the office? We’re on the go so much we’re rarely at our desk to actually check in on team members.

We know we need to provide clear expectations, but when we’re in person we can have this magical tendency to assume that our team members know what we want and when we want it.

We know we need to give real time feedback, and we worry over how they will react, so we put it off.  

You see where I’m going here?

For the bulk of the last 10 years, the majority of my team members have been remote from me. I’ve been in San Francisco when they’ve been in Phoenix, Chicago, Dallas, New York, and Atlanta.

I’ve had a lot of success with remote management and want to share the 3 things I think about.

• Connection
• Expectations
• Accountability

Connection

I kick off every management relationship with a “Getting to Know You” chat. I want to know about the important people in their life. I want to know what shows they’re binge watching. I want to know what gets them out of bed after a tough week at work. I want to know the vision for the life they hope to be living in a couple of years.

The genuine and personal interest I show lays the foundation for trust. It also results in them asking a ton about me. I want my team members to know what makes me tick, my passions, my goals.

The mutual connection we form here is our foundation.  

As we kick off our remote relationship, I maintain that connection by:

• Starting every single 1:1 with anywhere from 5-20 minutes personally connecting.
• Pinging them nearly daily. Ex. “Morning, just dropping by to say hello!” “Happy Monday! What was the highlight of your weekend?”
• Sending funny gifs related to their interests/passions.

Another key element is I wrap nearly every interaction by asking an assumptive question related to supporting them. 

• “What can I do to support you today?”
• “What’s the best way I can support you on this project?”

Expectations

I have high expectations. I demand the best of people. And you know what? People WANT high expectations. They want to feel that their leader wants and needs to see their best.  

On my teams, I have made it a practice to manage to weekly priorities.

Every Friday afternoon, team members indicate where their priorities landed while they strategically plan for the 3-5 priorities they will focus on the following week.

As days of the week go by, as we check in, as we have our 1:1s, it enables us to be in frequent dialogue about what’s getting done, what hurdles are cropping up, and what coaching and support they need to successfully reach and exceed their expectations.

Metric, project, and role expectation alignment is a fundamental piece of managing people well and having a consistent process in which you do this enables greater employee engagement and output.

Accountability

What’s the point in asking people to do work or having expectations if you don’t follow up? It’s truly as simple as that.

We can have a fear factor that if we follow up and check in on how things are going that people will brand us a micro manager. Guess what - it’s not micro management, it’s simply management.

The key is your approach. These are some of my favorites:

• “How are we looking on X?”
• “What’s feeling awesome about X? What’s a hurdle getting in your way?”
• “How are you feeling about bringing X to a wrap?”

With so many managers leading remotely for the first time and managers being challenged in a new way, I hope you’ll see the silver lining I do - it’s an amazing opportunity to tap back into the core elements that make for an amazing manager.