Organizational riddle: what's hard to do and gets harder when it's remote

If you are reading this line you're probably looking for the answer...and hopefully to read the article. Either way, I'm happy to have you here.

The answer is: people management.

Ok, so the starting point here is that people management by itself is/was hard to do. Why would you ask? because there is humans trying to manage humans, and it will be always all about asymmetrical relationships based on mutual trust.

When we speak about trusting the other human, it's a very deep sentence. Because whenever you miss the concept during work being a leader, you end doing silly things such as over creating status meetings, interpreting productivity of each individual, assessing the scenarios without all the context, and basically micromanaging leaving your teams with no oxygen.

Oxygen means literally to be able to breathe. Being micromanaged generates distress among other feelings, and one of the main distress symptoms is not having all the breathing capacity on the chest.

Now...let's try to figure this out having in count that everything is going to happen with lots of physical distance between those humans.

And there's the first hint. Humans have an amazing capacity to feel the same, even far away from the other human. Just try to remember that time were you wanted a hug from a loved one, I'm sure you could understand and what does it generates to you, even without being able to feel it physically, but you did at some point...

I don't want to overwhelm anybody talking about how our neurons and serotonin works, but that's all about it.

Trusting somebody that is far away from you, means you're 100% betting on ethical behavior. And that's why you need mature humans, that are able to acknowledge this concept of trust being thousand miles away from the other team member. But it doesn't mean you can't monitor work.

The only hack to make this work, is that commonly the human that's being managed is not the problem...you need to work with those with THE problem to make the company grow. Your leadership.

Your leadership team has to be trained, couched, emotionally tracked and hopefully with amazing written skills which is not always taken in count, since async work is going to happen and written communication is going to be, probably 80% of your daily/weekly communication.

So here are a few ideas to strength your people management working remotely. And I will make each bullet point a little bit larger than others, because it requires a little bit of explanations...

1. Translate "trust" into behaviors, actions and deliverables on your team and roles. By translating this concepts it doesn't mean it will be alright. You can easily find clear behaviors, actions and deliverables, but that doesn't mean they are accurate, they need to be refined, so you don't go down into micromanagement or over control causing distress. Make sure those translations are socialized with the team member, shared and agreed.
2. Walk the talk. Don't say you're flexible with working hours, respectful with others schedules or even goal driven, show it. There is nothing more frustrating than looking at a leader that doesn't "walk the talk". If you're texting people to urgently respond at anytime in the day, if leaders are stressed because they don't know what people are doing, or how the are impacting the main targets, you're seriously not in the right spot. Make sure you create the mechanisms to sync or async monitoring, async reporting or even control, but stick to your words and commitments over all.
3. Please, but please invest time on understanding your team context behind the screen. There needs to be a basic understanding on how emotionally, physically and spiritually people are facing work. But, use topic N°2, walk the talk, and invest time to tell what's your context as a leader, including how stressed you've been and how you feel. This will make topic N°1 even stronger, because however you're translating those concepts, it's going to have a unique-individualized context that makes you as a leader feel more comfortable, and for the team member a better way to face it understanding what needs to be expressed timely and as concrete work.

Remote people's management is very hard, because it expose leaders and team members to be vulnerable, and my recommendation if you're a leader do it proactively. Show yourself as a human being trying to give the best out of you to really embrace your team even being in distance.

That's all folks, hands to work!

My articles are made in one-time inspirational moment. I'm very sorry if you find wording mistakes. ;)

Best,

Once again, Joaco.