Leading by "Remote Control"

(2009年11月5日)

By Carl Eidson, Ph.D.

One of our managers just had a group of employees move to home offices. As he described the situation, he acknowledged some worries. “What if they’re not as productive?” he asked. “How do those who are not used to working independently keep from getting distracted? How do I keep them motivated and focused?”

In our client organizations, I’m hearing the same question from a lot of managers: How can I effectively lead a dispersed team? There’s an old adage “Inspect what you expect.” We know that holding employees accountable for work quality and quantity has a positive, motivating effect. Since face to face observation is not a possibility with a virtual team, the question is how to “inspect” performance. To support productivity, the remote manager must find alternate methods that are reliable and accurate.

When leading from a distance, it’s especially easy to fall into the trap of making assumptions rather than evaluating specific, measureable employee behaviors. In my experience, some of the best opportunities for observing behavior remotely include:

• Listen carefully. Pay attention to how employees communicate during phone conversations, including contributions to teleconferenced team meetings. If appropriate, listen in a supportive role on customer calls.
• Examine the content of e-mails. You can expand this form of observation by asking to be copied or blind-copied on messages sent to peers, and internal or external customers.
• Review written work output. This might include documents such as proposals, internal reports, spreadsheets, or presentation slides created by team members.
• Document comments and feedback from others. Such input may be provided by team members, internal staff, or other internal or external customers who interact with employees. When possible, ask for specific, observable, examples of behaviors that support the feedback.

Following some or all of these suggestions will help you gather enough fact based information to provide accurate, unbiased evaluations of remote employee performance.

Do you manage geographically dispersed employees? What issues have you faced? Let us know what has worked best for you.

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作者介绍

Carl Eidson

Carl Eidson博士，Wilson Learning业务发展和经销商网络的副总裁。他领导和辅导着一个由100多家独立分销商组成的虚拟团队，从多伦多延伸到布宜诺斯艾利斯。为了远程影响结果，他利用创新的通信技术和虚拟领导技能为销售能力发展、营销活动和以客户为中心的推广活动创建系统。他拥有工业和组织心理学博士学位，并在《应用心理学杂志》、《绩效表现》、《国际挑选与评估杂志》、《商业与心理学杂志》等学术期刊上发表过关于选拔顶尖人才的论文。他经常在专业会议上发表关于绩效改善的研究和实践的演讲。

阅读更多， Carl Eidson