Out of Sight, Out of Mind – Mastering the Art of Remote Leadership

I will preface this by saying that I have been primarily remote since about 2013. While I did a fair bit of work visiting customers in their offices for a number of those years, I have not lived in the same state (or even the same time zone) as my direct manager since then. I learned many years ago that I thrive in a remote environment, where I can’t be sidelined by “drive-bys” and I’m not being jarred out of my thoughts by the sales floor gong or other raucous “collaboration”. Having a global pandemic push us all out of offices was amazing for me, because it put me on a level playing field for the first time in my career. Finally, I had just as much of a chance to build those connections with my leaders that allowed for advancement, because no one else was physically in front of them, either. Everything seemed to be coming up roses, despite the health crisis.

As life returns to the “new normal”, I’m seeing plenty of advocates for shifting to remote-first workforces. LinkedIn is chock full of people sharing productivity improvement statistics, touting their own successes in improving work-life balance, and criticising organisations pushing for “return to office”. It has felt to me that remote-first is quickly becoming the norm, and I was thrilled about what that meant for my own career prospects. A couple weeks ago, though, someone said something that stopped me dead in my tracks. They said they had an unpopular opinion to share: they were coming out as pro-RTO.

Their rationale was intriguing; they believed that remote work, especially as someone early career, fostered career stagnation. Others chimed in to agree, noting that when they aren’t in the office, they don’t get a chance to “rub elbows” with strategic leaders, which in turn limited their own growth opportunities. Here I was, I talking to a group of engineers, saying that the one thing I loved most about remote-first workforces was the very thing that they felt was holding them back. I definitely had to pause a beat to consider that perspective before weighing in with my thoughts.

I think that their observations are valid, but I also think that these experiences are symptoms of a larger problem, and I don’t believe being physically present in an office genuinely improves the experience. I don’t think we have a remote work problem; we have a remote leadership problem, and really, we just have a leadership problem in general. It has long been true in engineering organisations that if you’re a great engineer, it’s expected you’ll be a great leader, too. Individual contributors are promoted into people manager roles without any training or even any discussion about their own career goals and path. I have ranted about the other side of this problem in the past, that there is rarely a defined growth path for someone who wishes to remain a highly technical IC. Even where that path is defined, though, the corporate world at large does a pretty poor job of preparing engineers for the role of people leadership. Add in the unique challenges of leading a remote team, especially one that is globally distributed, and you have a recipe for disaster.

Don’t get me wrong. Many companies recognised this problem years ago and have tried to address it. The company where I was first thrown into a people manager role eventually rolled out a “Manager Boot Camp” two day intensive training, addressing things like conflict resolution, strategic planning, and performance management. My most recent company had an entire series of trainings for ICs and leaders alike around these same topics. Still, I can count on one hand with fingers left over the number of managers I’ve worked for who have taught me leadership skills by example, rather than by demonstrating negative behaviours that I don’t want to repeat. I fear that these young engineers are experiencing poor leadership, and, having nothing to compare it to, have inferred that this is simply a byproduct of remote culture.

Good leadership, in my opinion, is built on a strategic foundation. Where are we going and how are we going to get there? The best leaders I’ve worked for have all had a very clear vision and mission, and I understood exactly what my part was in fulfilling that vision. I hear a lot about SMART goals, but it seems the R, Relevant, is largely either overlooked or misunderstood. In nearly my nearly 30 years of work experience, I have worked for exactly one company where I was fully aware of our company vision and strategic goals, I had a firm understanding of the goals of my direct leaders defining the part we would play in reaching those goals, and my own goals were completely aligned and relevant as a result. That was also the only organisation I’ve ever been part of where each role was clearly defined, for both technical as well as leadership paths, outlining not only the technical expectations, but also the leadership and organisational impact expectations for each level.

By simply implementing these fundamental leadership principles in my own teams, I have had huge successes in growing interns and entry level engineers, even in a remote environment. Sure, it was hard for all of us. We had to learn to adopt effective means of asynchronous communications. We all had to find a balance between autonomy and collaboration. I had to trust that my team would come to me when they were stuck, but I also had to learn when and how to check in effectively to ensure that they were aligned and on track. As a result, I was able to grow interns and junior analysts into a fully staffed operational team in just over a year while my colleagues sat on their same open reqs for senior talent. More importantly, everyone on my team knew exactly what was expected of them, and they were able to create their own SMART goals that were truly relevant to our vision and mission, which also outlined their path forward.

When you find this balance, an even better thing happens, too – you find yourself in a state of flow. By clearly defining your vision and mission objectives and giving your team the autonomy to define how they each get there, you’re fostering intrinsic motivation. As Daniel Pink described in Drive, intrinsic motivation comes from autonomy, mastery, and purpose, and where you find this intrinsic motivation, you find flow. Your work becomes its own motivation, as you continuously to challenge yourself to make a measurable impact toward the common goal. You never have to ask what you need to do to move ahead, and you can start incorporating the expectations of higher levels whenever you find yourself needing a challenge. Similarly, when meeting the expectations of your level is enough of a challenge to keep you satisfied, you have the autonomy to shift your focus towards mastery, ensuring that you are demonstrating these skills to the absolute best of your ability, and finding purpose in your continuous improvement.

While I don’t claim to have everything figured out, I am pretty confident in saying that if your team feels stagnant or unsure of how to move upwards within your team simply because you cannot see them, that is a failure of you, their leader, not the environment. As long as your vision is clear, you should be able to validate and reassure their work towards that vision without looking over their shoulder, so we can all live our best, most productive work life possible without the disruptive chaos that’s so difficult for the neuro-spicy among us.