Chapter 3 What It Means to Lead at a Distance

Rule 3: Know that working remotely changes the interpersonal dynamics, even if you don’t want it to.

Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things . I am tempted to think . there are no little things.

—Bruce Barton, ad executive and US congressman

Ahmed had been a supervisor for a couple of years, but all of his team was right down the hall. With a corporate policy change, three of his team members are now working from home. He knows the world has changed but doesn’t really understand what that will mean for him and what he must do each day. He’s often surprised at how little misunderstandings turn into problems and how people miss messages he thought were perfectly clear.

In this chapter, we are going to talk more about the distance that Ahmed (and you) are experiencing and what it all means. We are going to expand on the last chapter to make sure you know where you are and where you want to go.

The title of this book seems simple enough. A Long-Distance Leader is someone who leads from a physical location separate from at least some of the people he or she leads. That covers a lot of situations, though, based on the way the modern workplace works.

Remote vs. Virtual

Here’s some basic terminology that will be important as we continue. First, there’s the issue of “remote” teams and “virtual” teams. They are used interchangeably but aren’t necessarily the same.

According to Dr. Karen Sobel Lojeski, formerly of Stonybrook University (SUNY Stonybrook) and now CEO of Virtual Distance International, here’s the distinction: Remote distance is just what it says. The people you lead are somewhere else at least part of the time. Perhaps you’re a sales manager with people working from the road who are constantly on their laptops and phones. Or you’re a project lead with team members scattered from Bangor to Bangalore. Or the company you run has a single location, but you have one person who, because of childcare needs, works from home one day a week.

The important thing about these teams is that team members may not be in physical proximity to each other. They lack the constant visual and other cues that frequent interaction and exposure to each other provide. Communication might be constantly mediated by screens and email. Meanwhile, the reporting structure and the power balance is fairly traditional. Things are different, but it’s to a much lesser degree than it feels at first.

Virtual distance is more complicated. Communication is primarily through technology, and you may be separated by distance, but there are structural differences to the relationship. If you lead a project where your team is made up of people from different departments, for example, you may have all the responsibility of a leader but none of the actual authority. Project teams and ad hoc teams are frequently “virtual”; there’s a project manager or leader, but that person may have no direct supervisory power—everyone on the team has a “real boss” they report to. This makes influence, rather than authority, the main way to get things done. The traditional levers of power (“I’m the boss, you have to do what I say”) aren’t as simple as in the past. It’s hard to twist arms through a phone line.

Additionally, virtual distance can be emotional. If you have a coworker who would rather send you an email than actually talk to you, there is virtual distance, even though the “remote distance” is easily covered. Now imagine they are literally out of sight (they couldn’t walk to your office if they wanted to)—how much more difficult would it be?

Types of Teams

We also need to be clear about what we mean when we talk about team dynamics. Whether it’s a functional team, a project team, or a political campaign, there are three types of teams a leader today might work with:

Co-located teams. Here everyone’s working in the same location the vast majority of the time. This is the kind of team most of us grew up on.

Completely remote teams. People work together toward a common goal, but they do most of their work physically separated from each other. Most communication then will not be face-to-face. A classic example is a sales manager with one direct report per region.

Hybrid teams. Some of your people share a workspace; others are in other locations. This might include full-time teleworkers, people in other offices, or even those working on a client site. A subset of the hybrid team is when people work from home a couple of days a week—or whenever they feel like it. If you’ve ever held a meeting with some people in a conference room and others dialing in on a speakerphone, you know there are some unique challenges. One of the fastest-changing challenges for hybrid teams is that people are constantly changing where they work—sometimes they’re in the office, sometimes they’re away—so processes and access to information can change almost daily. Your team might be a hybrid, with most people in the office one day, then completely virtual the next.

Each of these types of teams has things in common (they need to get work done, exchange information, and build on each other’s work) and unique challenges (management by walking around doesn’t work if you are in Seattle and part of your team is in Sydney or Singapore). But our focus will be on completely remote and hybrid teams through this book.

Beyond these distinctions, there are further differences for your remote or hybrid teams, based on the context of the work. Consider the following:

Sales teams. If you have a team of salespeople, it is likely that you once were one of those salespeople. Sales teams have been doing the remote thing longer, which can mean they experience less pain working remotely, or as we have often found it just means they don’t know how much better it could be. They have accepted the issues and difficulties of working remotely.

Project or ad hoc teams. These teams may be shorter lived, with high-stakes results on the line. You might be leading a project team and not have some (or any) of the team members reporting to you.

Individual contributor teams. Sales teams likely fall into this category, but they aren’t the only example. When you lead a team of individual contributors, the focus on remote teamwork and collaboration might not be as strong, yet you still must keep them from becoming too insulated or individually minded. They are still on a team, with team goals and objectives.

Global teams. At some point if people aren’t in the building, it doesn’t matter how far away they are . except where cultural differences and vast differences in time zones make communication and relationship building more challenging.

What Hasn’t Changed

Kevin has had this question on his whiteboard for several months: “How does leadership change, and what shouldn’t change?” In many ways that sums up this section of the book, and it certainly is the focus of this chapter.

First, here’s what shouldn’t change .

The leader’s primary focus. Whether they are outside your office door, down the hall, out in the warehouse, or in another time zone or country, leadership is still about human beings. Too often leaders want to move to the details of situation or context without first remembering that team members have feelings, emotions, needs, and personal objectives that need to be considered. Start with the idea that everything starts with people and you will start in the right place.

The fundamentals of human behavior. Since you are leading people, the more you understand the psychology of people—their wants, needs, desires, fears, and anxieties—the more successful you will be. Contrary to what you might read in the popular or trendy business press, the fundamentals of human behavior have not changed because people work from a different location, use a certain type of technology, or were born in a certain year. We will point to these fundamentals throughout the book.

The principles of leadership. Along with the fundamentals of human behavior, there are skills and characteristics that lead people to follow some people more than others. These traits, characteristics, and skills haven’t changed as people have migrated from the office to their homes or a client location.

The roles of leaders. Regardless of where the team is located, leaders are asked to coach, influence, and communicate. They are expected to coalesce and collaborate with teams, set goals, and lead change. We talked a bit about this in chapter 1, but it deserves a reminder here: the basic roles expected of leaders haven’t changed as the team has dispersed.

The high-level expectations of our output. Our organizations still want us to hit production targets, finish valuable projects, meet a budget, work safely, and a hundred other things. These high-level work goals don’t change when people work in different places.

While those important things haven’t changed, we must recognize and address the differences caused by distance or, like Ahmed, we’ll experience frustration and unexpected surprises.

What Has Changed

You’re reading this book because something has changed dramatically in the way you work. Odds are, it’s one or more of the following.

Geography

We’ve worked with organizations that talk about leading teams on different floors or different buildings on the same corporate campuses. There is no doubt that some of the long-distance factors we will discuss in this book are valid even over short distance. What is changing is how geographically dispersed we have become. Kevin has for many years led a team spread across seventy-five miles, but now that team spans from Richmond, Virginia, to Chicago, to Phoenix, to Fort Wayne, to Indianapolis and beyond. Even that isn’t as dispersed as many of you face, with teams spanning the globe from Dallas, Texas, to Dubai; from Dublin to Danforth, Illinois. These geographic changes matter, perhaps in different ways than you initially might think.

Now you don’t just have distance but time zones, cultural norms and expectations, and generally more complexity to your work as a leader . as if it wasn’t complicated enough.

You are out of sight

This may seem obvious, but when leading at a distance you aren’t seen as often by the people you want to influence.

If you want to lead by example, it is much easier if people can see you. If you want others to help each other, they need to see you are willing to roll up your sleeves yourself—after all, if you aren’t above doing the dirty work, people will notice. Those physically around can see that your behavior is consistent with your values.

When you share space with people, they can ask questions on the fly or request a meeting at a moment’s notice because your door is open or they know you are around. People not in the office can’t have that awareness, so you must have processes to overcome this difference.

As strange as it feels at first, your physical presence conveys the power of your position and your willingness to lead. If people need to schedule time with you, aren’t sure if now is a good time to ask a question, or haven’t developed a warm personal relationship with you, you have both immediate and long-term problems to overcome.

Whether we’re talking actual physical presence or “virtual presence” where you are available and visible to your people, “being seen” is critical to leadership and suffers in a long-distance relationship.

Technology

Kevin started his company with a fax machine and internet through CompuServe. Besides letting you know that Kevin has been around awhile, it reminds us how much the world of technology has changed and will continue to change. Recognizing the technology available to you and using it appropriately and effectively can be a big lever for your success as a Long-Distance Leader. Keeping up with new tools that make your work and communication more effective is part of your job.

If you aren’t using the available tools, your team won’t either. And if you aren’t using them well, the resistance will increase. If they don’t have a model of success because you aren’t using the tools well or at all, good luck getting them to use those tools.

If you are a Long-Distance Leader, and perhaps especially if you are of our generation, this means you must encourage the use of the right tools at the right times, and you must use them yourself.

Working Relationships

Although people aren’t working in the same building or corridor, they still work together, hand off work to each other, and therefore must communicate successfully.

And although relationships don’t develop or improve simply because of regular face-to-face interaction, personal contact provides a boost in creating working relationships. So, the need for working relationships (both practically and psychologically) doesn’t change when people work remotely from each other, but the opportunities and context for building those relationships changes drastically. Learning how to build and maintain them is always an important part of your work as a leader.

And . virtual communication changes the interpersonal dynamic, even if you don’t want it to. As a Long-Distance Leader, it gets harder—and perhaps even more important—to intentionally nurture relationships with all your team members.

You get fewer communication cues

When you speak to someone face-to-face, you get instantaneous feedback. Some of it is purposeful—people can ask questions or comment, and as a leader you should encourage honest responses to your messages. Much of this is involuntary; the broad smile of acceptance or the furrowing of a brow tells us we need to adjust our message, repeat it, check for understanding, or get more information before we proceed. We constantly and naturally adjust our messages on the fly based on those real-time responses.

When working at a distance, the balance of communication modes changes. Think about how much of your interaction takes place in writing. Email, texts, and online communication are your most frequent methods of passing information back and forth. That often feels impersonal and cold. It’s one-way communication and demands that you hone all your communication skills, not just your verbal ones.

When we do speak, it’s on the phone—with only our tone of voice and words and without the supporting evidence of smiles, winks, or posture to help support our message. And even when people can see us (if we’re using webcams or videoconferencing), there is a conscious separation from our audience that video alone can’t completely overcome.

In a world where those immediate cues are missing, you must ensure your message is easily understood and that you find other ways to receive critical cues. Sure, you sent that email saying you’re changing how the process for the Jackson account is going to work. But does that mean people really have the information they need to change or know how this will impact them? Are they blithely accepting the news, or are they freaking out and frantically instant messaging each other while you sit back thinking everything’s fine?

We have all spent a lifetime learning to communicate in person—and now we’re conducting our most important work in ways that we may be less effective and comfortable with.

Information gets filtered

The way information is received is often filtered and mediated in unexpected or unintended ways.

As a leader, you don’t just send messages; you receive them . in mass quantities and multiple forms. When you work in proximity with people, you can pop in for a clarifying chat or watch their body language as they give you bad news and respond accordingly. When you receive information on the phone, often without context or advance notice, it is hard to make sure you’re really reading carefully, processing the information clearly, and responding in ways you are proud of.

Your approach to leadership may be out of date

For a lot of us, our first leadership experiences occurred where everyone was in the same location. We could walk through the cube farm and see who was (or at least appeared to be) working and who wasn’t. We overheard conversations or saw actions and could respond proactively and immediately.

Like us, you may have had managers or leaders who relied on the old “command and control” method of getting things done (“Because I said so”). Because they were nearby or could pop in at any moment, they watched everything we did and made sure we did it exactly the way they wanted it done. Whether that was good or bad, it was at least possible.

But when your team is scattered to the far corners of the continent, it is impossible to know what every person is doing all the time. Even if you wanted to monitor absolutely everything they do and make sure people weren’t slacking off, you couldn’t do it, and it’s important to ask why you’d even want to. Since you can’t know exactly what everyone’s doing at any given time, you need to find ways to make sure people have the proper guidance for their tasks, are clear on the metrics, and their progress is communicated to you in ways that give you what you need to maintain progress—and your sanity. Stated another way, to lead successfully at a distance you must build greater trust with your team members—command and control won’t work and will drive you crazy trying.

(Some of) people’s needs change

The basic needs of humans don’t change, but the context of working locations may make some needs more important or obvious than they were in the past. If you have team members teleworking from their home, they may have interaction needs that were previously met in the workplace that now are missing. As a Long-Distance Leader, you must notice the needs that surface and find ways to help meet them. Why? Because as those needs are met, people are better able to focus on and complete their work successfully.

This isn’t only true for the more extroverted on your team who especially might miss the interaction and flow of life at the office while working remotely. In this digitally connected world, people have become increasingly isolated from each other physically, and the workplace has been for many that oasis of connection. Now, as people work from home, we as leaders must be aware of these needs. If we help people meet those needs and encourage them to do so, we get not only more productive team members but healthier and less stressed ones too.

More individual work focus

Often as people work remotely, their work becomes more focused on individual tasks and individual contributions. This shift to an individual focus and away from “the team” isn’t necessarily bad; in some cases, it probably leads to better results. It is, however, a change that needs to be recognized by the organization, by us as leaders, and perhaps most importantly by the individuals doing the work. Recognizing this focus and making it overt—and at the same time not inadvertently individualizing the focus too much—is a nuance worth noting.

Working in isolation

Leading at a distance is literally a lonely job.

While it’s lovely to have uninterrupted time to get your work done, part of the joy of leadership is being with other people. Hearing other opinions, getting timely answers to questions, brainstorming, and building on ideas is an exciting part of your role.

But where do you turn when you have a simple question? Do you have access to trusted advisors when you experience doubt? Can you check your assumptions, or do you come up with an idea and fire off orders without running them by someone close by first? Moreover, you don’t get to see the acceptance of your ideas or hear good news firsthand . never mind being able to celebrate over pizza or a slice of birthday cake in the break room.

Our survey confirms that feeling isolated from their teams is a huge concern for leaders and impacts their effectiveness and job satisfaction. But who are you supposed to turn to for information, inspiration, and companionship in an increasingly long-distance workplace?

Now What?

Yes, being a Long-Distance Leader is difficult. It’s also not impossible. (Remember, Genghis Khan and Queen Victoria did it . so can you.) You have to think about your job in new ways, be aware of the changing dynamics that impact you and your work, and change some behaviors.

In the rest of this book we’ll look at each of the challenges we face as leaders, how leading at a distance affects them, and the new attitudes, points of view, and behaviors we’ll have to apply to these changes.