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Distant management – practical philosophical perspectives
By Bente Thomassen and Henrik Villumsen, MannazFollowing on from the series of articles on distant management in the Mannaz Newsletters:
> Virtual line management: The competitive advantage
> Distant management in the midst of Networks and Hierarchies
and in our conversations with readers we have noticed a number of themes that have emerged:
Trust, Chaos, Control, Vulnerability, and the ability to handle these and work with them.
These are the reoccuing day-to-day leadership issues of the remote manager.
In our work with the articles and other remote managers we have noticed the high importance of trust for the success of virtual organisations. One way of characterising modern organisations is to which degree they can handle chaos. The more efficient an organisation can handle chaos the less control systems needed to exercise. An important element here is that chaos can be uncontrollable when things are going on that you do not know anything about and that you cannot influence.
Chaos and control
Many managers (and consultants) are terrified of chaos. Whenever a group is confused, and whenever people are really uncomfortable not knowing what to do, most of us take that as a signal that we have failed them somehow. The mental model we have is that teams and organisations should work smoothly, that we as leaders should feel in control at all time. Chaos is basically a loss of control. So the instance chaos erupts, we back off from it. We rush in to save the group from confusion. We tend to think that is our job. Meg Wheatley, management professor and consultant, points out, that this is only true if you think of your organisation as a machine, because machines cannot tolerate great variance. Machines are established to run in certain environments. They have no flexibility to deal with sudden change. If you think of an organisation and a team as a living system, then hopefully you can structure it so that it has the capacity for great flexibility and resilience, and the ability to adapt, to change, and to grow. This is true for on-site teams, and in particular for virtual teams. As all managers know, letting go of control is something one has to get used to and some will never learn this. If possible, it is important we learn step by step, which means to have direct line management experience before moving into the remote manager position. Remember to walk before you run!
Trust: first connect, then collaborate
Trust consists of a willingness to increase your vulnerability towards another person whose behaviour you cannot control. This can be tested in a situation where your potential benefit is much less than your potential loss if the other person abuses your vulnerability. In other words: trust is the ability to say to a colleague: “you may hurt me, but I can live with that”.
Unless we strongly believe that others will not abuse our trust, we don’t trust them. Translated into the context of remote management the ground rule is: Does this particular action create trust, or does it reduce trust within the team?
Experience seems to tell us that trust is usually built early on virtual teams, or not at all. Some observers talk of the 'virtual paradox' - virtual teams being highly dependent on trust, but not operating under conditions supportive of trust-building. Trust is often built on perceived similarities, but distance can make this process difficult. Chances for misunderstanding are also increased with isolation and alienation creating problems. So it is important first to connect, and then to collaborate with the team.
Being a highly sensitive radar
In order to learn the essentials of good leadership, you have to be able to identify, process and react to the small signals that can make the day-to-day platform for leadership. For example, paying attention to the sound of productive noise level and unproductive noise level, and being highly aware of signals of conflict between people. If you haven’t learned this as a direct line manager you are at a disadvantage as a remote manager because you don’t know what to look for. You could easily become paranoid and develop a micromanaging leadership style or spend most of your time on the road from place to place in an attempt to know all about what is going on. Another message here goes to the senior management - do not appoint mangers for remote managerial positions without having been in house managers first.
The vision and mission: Simple Guiding Principles
An important perspective is that you as a remote manager prepare your people for the normal situation - which is that you are out of reach. This can be done in several ways and a fundamental issue is to ensure that everyone understands the mission and vision of the company and the function.
These will form Simple Guiding Principles for your employees, that are guiding their actions when acting on their own.
A clearly articulated communication culture
Create a clear, commonly understood and accepted picture of how the team is handling the situation of being geographically spread. Many potential misunderstandings can be eliminated because of ground rule number one – we trust each other and truly believe we all act in the interest of the whole team. This means to have in place:
- a clear meeting structure
- equal access to technology
- clear and shared decision upon which media to use for which information
- awareness about the cultural diversity that exists within the team
- spending time on “social calls”, that is not strictly business related issues only
- being online together whenever in the office so that competencies can be used freely
This culture of communication will help overcome misunderstandings and make it easier to pick up on bits and pieces that can be improved.
KISS never gets out of fashion
As there will be an ongoing need for clarifying a lot of things, ground rules are important - The KISS principle – Keep It Simple Stupid is one to use. Misunderstandings, interpretations and lack of clarity will occur all the time in spite of clear and visible expectations for quality, responsibility, deadlines, milestones, tasks, and results. So keep communication short and to the point, and create a culture where it is allowed to raise questions and bring up inconsistencies and share concerns, and rumours. One remote manager once told me that during every telephone conference with his people had “Good rumours” on the agenda. He said that was very helpful to all. It reduced paranoia and it gave him a chance to explain a lot of things. But the most important thing is that there is a space where these things can be brought up and dealt with.
Being aware of faceless abstractions
The ongoing and daily communication with the team is also a splendid platform to communicate and sustain the focus on the expected attitudes and the goals of the team, so that they are present in people's minds at all times and guide their performance. For instance, mention trust as difficult but a necessary condition for efficient team performance. Many managers do not pay enough attention to this. In many cases because they wrongly believe it takes too much time, which it does not necessarily do. Distance can make faceless abstractions of us all. Never lose sight of the fact that your virtual team members are people, and they have needs - needs for belonging, meaning, accomplishment, and recognition; feelings of frustration, anger, excitement, boredom, and alienation.
Words are powerful tools in overcoming alienation. It can be done by adding one or two more sentences. For instance, if one direct report has done something outstanding, praise the person for his or her performance, and continue by saying: ”and this is exactly the kind of behaviour we all need to do in order to build trust and reach our goals” – it takes 5 seconds and it works. The same goes for giving feedback on poor performance in order to make sure the team learns from this. Obviously this is a delicate matter - people can easily feel negative about having their mistakes shared with the team, especially during a telephone conference where they cannot see each other. But shying away from giving direct and honest feedback mostly adds to the problem.
Building a team of deputies
More and more managers have global responsibilities which means that people around the globe may want to get in touch 24/7/365. This is of course impossible and in these cases it is a mere question of survival, more than managing. The situation may call for a change in perspective of the remote manager. He needs to create a team of deputies, and build “local allies” within the geographical remote organisation, both in terms of his own team, and within the surrounding organisation. By having middle managers, or appointed direct reports to take care of day-to-day business, the remote manager is able to reduce the number of contacts.
Paying attention to the unsaid
The risk of conflict makes it crucial for the remote manger to focus their sensitivity towards hidden messages in what their people tell – or don’t tell. It implies being aware of:
- what is said “between the lines” during a phone conversation
- changes in the tone of emails or words used
- lengths and frequency of emails
- number of phone calls,
- changes in the interaction between individuals who depend upon each other
This takes effort and energy, but is important, particularly in cross cultural teams. In some cultures it is not at all common to admit problems or express need for help, for instance Asian countries where indirect communication is the rule rather than the exception. These indirect messages, giving small hints rather than blunt and direct communication, requires high level awareness, and mental presence. We have heard remote managers say that they cannot do this or will not do this due to lack of time – which can be seen as an excuse for not taking leadership: to focus on communication and interpersonal relationships combined with simple and carefully chosen management tools.
Rewarding individuals and teams
One difficult but equal important perspective is to create a reward system within the organisation. The system should ensure alignment: behaviours promoted by the reward system are behaviours that the manager wants. Rewarded behaviour should be a combination of incentive elements that benefit both outstanding individual performance and team performance. This may sound contradictory, but think of a football team: individuals are remunerated individually, according to the ability to score goals or defend. At the same time, the team is rewarded as a team, for winning matches, for instance the Champions League.
Out of sight – out of mind?
An often concern expressed from remote reports is the fear of being overlooked or even forgotten by headquarter or their superior. “Do they remember us?”, “Do they see and recognise our contributions?” are common statements from remote teams, and express worries about career, as well as recognition in general. Remote managers must at all times keep in mind that they are the power sponsor for the remote team. It is their obligation to tell others about the successes accomplished by the team, and most importantly let the remote team know that the rest of the organisation is aware of this. Recognition is a very powerful motivating factor and is a true win-win situation.
Continuous improvement
Many of the factors mentioned so far have to do with creating a trusting culture within the remote organisation. An extremely important perspective is continuous improvement, creating a culture where
- everybody is doing their best
- learning from mistakes
- time and resources are allocated to evaluating and improving the current state within the remote team
- concerns are shared before they turn into conflicts or friction within the team
As a remote manager, you hold a key position. You are responsible for keeping the torch of team values burning, and you are responsible for holding it high. First step is to define the core human and leadership values you want to base your future as a successful remote manager on.
We wish you luck in this ongoing process
Read the series of articles about distant management:
> Virtual line management: The competitive advantage
> Distant management in the midst of Networks and Hierarchies
> Distant management – practical philosophical perspectives
About the Authors
| Bente Thomassen, coach and consultant. Bente has more than a decade of experience in designing, developing and delivering leadership development programmes, and consults and trains in a number of projects across Europe. |
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| Henrik Villumsen, trainer and consultant. Henrik has 20 years experience in leadership training and development. Nowadays, he mostly works in international cross cultural settings, where distant line management is the rule rather than the exception. |
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