The eternal question – What makes a manager, a leader?
Theoretically, it means someone who maximizes team efforts for the achievement of greater goals. But practically, there is a lot more to it than just that.
As technology evolves and business dynamics shift, a great leader is one who can adapt to this change. They’re the ones with foresight and flexibility to customize their culture and ideas in sync with the changing business trends.
5 Leadership Qualities You Must Have
Building Trust
A team can only survive when there is a trustworthy relationship among the team members. And as their leader, it is your job to build it.
Remote teams rarely meet in-person. And creating a trustworthy environment for a team that isn’t co-located can be a big task!
Creating a sense of availability for your team can help you in building trust. Further, a feedback mechanism (both positive and negative) is important for building trust when teams are distributed all across the globe.
Kari DePhillips, the Founder of Content Factory, realized many of her messages to remote employees were too negative. To improve morale, she places an emphasis on positive feedback.
Problem Solving
As a leader, you cannot overlook the problems of your employees hoping that the team manager would take care of things. To set the right example of team spirit, you not only need to address the employee issues but also need to resolve them.
Denis Duvachelle, the CEO of Twoodo, describes how team members had several arguments due to miscommunication. He introduced regular scrum meetings to keep geographically distributed team members on the same page.
Effective Communicator
“Remote work isn’t a good fit for someone who isn’t a strong communicator since it’s important to communicate well when everyone isn’t in the same physical office. It’s also important for anyone who works in a remote setting to be self-motivated since there’s no one physically available with you to ensure that you stay on task and complete it.” – Collage.com Founder and Co-CEO, Joe Golden.
Good communication skills are essential for a remote leader. Since your team isn’t physically present, conveying your point virtually is important for achieving goals. In fact, communication skills are required in every phase of remote work, whether it is to conduct meetings, to provide feedback or to help employees grow.
For instance, when an employee does not perform up to the mark, instead of snide comments or angry looks, a great leader provides constructive feedback — and learns from the experience, in order to give better, clearer instructions in the future.
Encouraging
Every business, regardless of size, may hit a bump in the road every now and then. In order to keep your team together and grow your business, you need to tell them that it’s okay.
Any employee can make mistakes, whether working remotely or in a cubicle beside their manager. But to keep the team morale up, you need to encourage them by analyzing and overcoming the obstacles that lead to the mistakes.
Defining Company Values
Company values and culture are one of the most important parts of building remote teams. Building culture within remote teams helps in engaging employees and enhancing their productivity. It makes the team members feel included and they are also able to overcome the isolation that often comes when working in a remote environment.
Trello CEO Michael Pryor said, “Since Trello is largely a remote company, we try make it a point to host an annual company retreat, flying out the entire organization to a single location to brainstorm, relax and socialize. I find that giving remote employees an opportunity to bond with teammates in-person makes collaboration and communication remotely so much easier, smooth and enjoyable.”
Building a culture within your remote team will help in achieving higher employee satisfaction and the overall growth of the organization.
Want To Become A Remote Leader?
I know we’re all thinking the same thing – It’s easier said than done! Writing about leadership qualities and actually implementing & acting on them are totally different things.
To efficiently lead remote teams, one must learn how from industry experts who have been there, done that.
Join The Remote Work Summit, the world’s largest online conference on remote work, and learn strategies and best practices from remote industry experts about leading, building and scaling remote teams.
