If I Can't See 'Em How Can I Lead 'Em?

Strategies for Managing and Leading Remotely

Course Description

Employees today work in a variety of locations, and often not the same location as their manager. Having remote workers provides a leader with flexibility in assigning work and the opportunity to bring together the best resources to do work. However, with people working remotely, the manager's job can also be more difficult. How do you delegate something to a remote person when you can't easily track their progress? How do you know what the remote employee is doing? Are they working on the right things? How do you coach a remote employee and give them regular feedback when you don't see them? What about remote communication? How often should you communicate, and is e-mail the best vehicle? These are concerns that become even more challenging when you consider that each employee has a different personality and style of thinking and working.

This interactive session is designed to help managers more effectively lead their remote employees. Through group exercises and discussion, participants will learn specific strategies for building remote relationships, delegating to remote employees, and measuring the performance of those working at a distance. Participants will also learn when to use e-mail or voice mail and when to have a voice-to-voice or face-to-face conversation. Understanding personality differences via the four Interaction Styles will help participants determine how to most effectively employ these strategies with each employee. Leaders walk away from this session with clarity about how leading remotely is different from leading people who are co-located and the need for deliberateness in their interactions with remote employees. They leave with techniques to translate the approaches they've successfully used in the co-located environment to their remote environment as well as new techniques for leading remotely.

Learning Objectives

As a result of successful completion of this one-day workshop participants are expected to:

• Enhance their relationships with remote employees.
• Lead remote meetings that are more inclusive of all personality styles.
• Delegate effectively to remote employees.
• Use language and communication to communicate more effectively remotely.
• More effectively measure the performance of remote employees.

Course Details

• Length: 1 day
• Audience: Managers and team leaders with employees who are remote
• Optimum Class Size: 12 - 24
• Prerequisites: None