EP 39 : How a Leader Coach manages their remote team

Using Coaching Skills to manage your remote team.

Do you have to suddenly manage your team remotely? You very likely will say yes.

Many people leaders out there face the challenge that they must rapidly transition to working with their team remotely.

How can you make this transition smoothly while maintaining productivity and motivation?

Deploy the Coaching mindset with intention

The Coaching mindset is a surprising reservoir of help here. After all, coaching is centred around the very idea of creating self-motivated teams.

Remote working relies on the ability of a leader to create self-reliant teams who display a great degree of autonomy. We want the team to continue to function well. We also want to maintain a motivating spirit.

Here is an initial truth: As a Leader, you would not want to be micromanaged when you are working from home. Neither does your team. Control is an important element. In fact, the most toxic way to work with your remote team is by having high expectations and giving them very low degree of control over their work.

Fundamentally, a Leader in this situation has a choice to make how they manage their perceived loss of control: Do I tighten the standards and introduce more rules on HOW things are done? Or do I give trust and invite my team to define the HOW together?

There is push vs pull relationship here

In the most extreme way, teams can end up on on either side of a spectrum:

Dependent Team: On the one hand of the scale, there is the dependent team that needs their Leader to provide detailed instructions. Team members are used to asking questions and that they get straight answers on what they should do.

Self-Reliant Team: This team shows ownership and has a clearly defined space where they use their own discretion on how things will get done. This requires from the Leader that they give space. It is that simple.

One technique to use?

Outcome-based thinking.

A Coaching Leader will be acutely aware of the concrete outcome that must be achieved. They will also define that as a non-negotiable with their team and share that. However, they will then clearly articulate where they see space for the team member to unfold their own thinking.

It involves asking yourself a few questions as a Leader

1. What is non-negotiable in the outcome that we want to achieve?i.e. the presentation must be completed in 2 weeks. The audience should ask at least 2-3 questions.

2. What is non-negotiable in the path to get to that outcome?i.e. they must use powerpoint, even if it feels outdated. They must have a milestone checkpoint by end of this week to show progress.

3. What is negotiable and open in regards to the path to get to that outcome?i.e. it does not really matter in which order they approach the stakeholders. The agenda in the presentation is also quite fluid.

It is this structured thinking that makes a huge difference. The more freedom you give to your team members, the more likely they will develop intrinsic motivation.

All the best in trying it out!