The call to reach out
Managing employees from a distance is now more likely to be part of any leader’s role. 
Due to global outsourcing, borderless knowledge workers and advancements in communication technologies, it is now probable that those who you need to lead and influence will reside in a different location, often many time zones away. If you add the fact that these co-workers and subcontractors may come from different cultural backgrounds, then the challenges of predictably getting results are magnified.
These challenges present themselves through the following questions:
- How can you manage your employees’ performance when you’re not there?
- How can you foster teamwork when your team can’t spend time together?
- How do you know when working remotely just isn’t working out?
The key to successful distance leadership is to apply the skills and practices that make for good in-person leadership, but to apply them with even more diligence and rigor. We have discovered that distance leadership can be accomplished successfully when the leader puts more emphasis on the following areas:
- Building and maintaining relationships through trust and sincere concern for employee well-being and morale.
- Freedom to self-manage through empowerment, delegation and the wise use of control.
- Maximizing team performance through clarity of purpose, clear roles and responsibilities and common work processes.
- Communication through the right use of technology combined with face-to-face visits.
- Managing individual performance through establishment of specific goals, use of trusted information systems, regular feedback and aligned rewards.
- Developing potential through challenging assignments and targeted development programs.
- Time management through efficient meetings and work-life balancing that matches cultural expectations.
Organizations enlist our help in developing their distance leaders when they need to:
- Build and maintain teams that span time zones and cultures.
- Develop leaders to manage employees who are not co-located.
- Resolve conflicts that arise due to cultural misperceptions or due to clashing realities based on the differing experiences between headquarters and remote locations.
- Improve underperforming work groups.
- Develop staff to move into distance leadership roles.