Forward Thinking Leadership: Managing a Remote First Team
In an ideal world, leadership and management go hand in hand; neither a leader without management skills nor a manager without leadership skills will get much done. Some of the greatest figures in history were both effective leaders and managers, striving to guide a group of people toward a common goal with efficiency. However, it can be difficult to find a balance between leading and managing. Each team of people and each goal is unique, making equal balance difficult to obtain.
Brandon Christenson serves as the President of Adilstone Group, and he has an extensive amount of experience leading and managing diverse teams in various industries across the world. Brandon shared his thoughts on the difference between leadership and management:
“I can say ‘Brian, here’s your task for you to do this week’ and that’s going to help you do your job, right? Help you manage it. Or I can say ‘Brian, I see something in you here, and I want you to head up the product development. You don’t know how to do it, but I see that you’ve got the ability in this to grow’. That to me starts to distinguish between leadership and management.” This is an example of leading over managing your team towards their goals, which in turn support the organizational goals.
The Harvard Business Review finds that management revolves around control to obtain a goal, while leadership refers to the ability to influence, motivate, and enable others towards success. Overall, management is more focused on the end goal while leadership is concerned with the process of guiding others toward that goal. Both are essential to any operation, and at times one might need to be implemented more than the other.
3 Leadership Tactics for a Virtual Team
Being a remote-first company comes with benefits as well as challenges, one of which is practicing effective leadership and management with a virtual team working across the globe. Without being intentional, it can be difficult to form genuine connections with coworkers when everyone interacts online. Team members can experience burnout and struggle to be productive when in a remote setting, and finding a work life balance can be difficult. Leaders within such an organization face the challenge of not being able to monitor their employees in a traditional way, which could potentially lead to mistrust and micromanaging. Despite all these obstacles, there are still many steps that can be taken to successfully lead and manage virtual teams.
Brandon shared three tactics that he uses to overcome many of these barriers and to develop a dedicated and trusted team at Adilstone Group, which is a remote-first organization with team members all over the world. Though all of them require some extra effort to be put in, the payoff is definitely worth it.
- Be intentional in connecting with your team. Though this is something that seems to happen naturally in an in-person setting, it can be difficult to be intentional when remote. Taking the time to talk to each of your employees as individuals will create a sense of community and loyalty to the company. It can be something as simple as asking how someone’s weekend was, or following up with them from a previous conversation. Whatever it is, starting off your online meetings by checking in on people will go a long way toward your development as a leader.
- Create a virtual water cooler. Not only should you strive to connect with your employees one on one, but you should also create a space for them to do that with each other. Having a virtual “water cooler” is about making a space for people to connect with one another and share things about themselves. This usually looks like making a team group chat and encouraging everyone to use it to discuss topics non work related. Like the first tactic, this is a great way to foster community at your company and create credibility for yourself as a leader.
- Hire the right people, and then trust them. “If I’m worried about you working, I hired the wrong person,” says Brandon. It’s important to be sure that you hire people you can trust to do their work, which makes the management of a virtual team much smoother. Employees desire to be trusted. Being too controlling and micro-managerial will often make them resentful and less motivated. You can find the right people by taking time to truly craft a hiring process that identifies and connects you with those potential people.
The Importance of Managing Yourself
Being a successful leader doesn’t just involve managing your team; it includes managing yourself as well. Yup, I’m talking about chasing after that elusive work-life balance that everyone is telling you to find. Many work-life balance advice we find on the internet are cliche and unhelpful.
“I would get these things saying ‘doing these five things will help you balance your work week’ and I would try it,” says Brandon, “So I tried to achieve this weekly, and overall I was failing miserably”. Eventually he found that he was able to practice a better work-life balance when he looked at his life in terms of seasons. There are seasons when he has to travel a lot, and seasons when he’s home. Seasons when he’s working on big projects, and seasons when he has smaller tasks. When he is going through busier seasons, Brandon makes sure to dedicate himself to his work and his team. When he is home and experiencing a lighter workload, he enjoys cooking for his family and spending a lot of time with them.
On top of making time for his family, Brandon tries to make time for himself and his hobbies. “I love sports, so I try to have sports in my work week,” he says. “I play soccer on Wednesday evenings, I play soccer on Sunday evenings during the fall and springtime, and for me that’s a big thing…I get on the field and I don’t care about anything, my phone stays in my car so I don’t have any text messages to deal with there. I’m a competitive guy, I get around a group of people that I really like to work with, so that helps me kind of manage myself as well”.
Knowing what season of work and life you are in can help you make better decisions as a leader, especially in a remote working environment. Though it won’t be perfect, finding time to do the things you enjoy and to spend with your loved ones is very important, even if they don’t always happen daily or weekly. Managing yourself and your time wisely will lead to greater productivity and more effective leadership overall.
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