Managing remote is taking care of co-workers, adapting the management styles, communicate in a proper way and dispatch meaningful tasks.

1. Remote drive teams and foster innovation

2. • Working remotely will become second nature
when you do it all the time.
• Only managers being skilled to manage
remote teams will be needed in the future.
• Remote managing is time consuming and is
not limited to task dispatching and control.
• Remote managing requests a servant
leadership style.

3. qDifferentiate your management style
qRethink how to dispatch work

4. From trust building to getting valuable output

5. Use different
management styles
Never stop adapting your management style to the
given situation and the people you address to. It
builds trust when you care!
General rules:
• Even though Collaborating, Participating and
Empowering styles are difficult to maintain
within a remote working environment, they
cannot be avoided. Structure the participation
for your co-workers in brainstorming and
delegating differently
• Communicate honestly and frequently. NEVER
send a document without comments and
explanation.
• Always use the same communication structure
to co-workers.
• Assign meaningful work. Always explain the
rationale of the task assigned.

6. Adapt your
management styles
If adapting your management styles in the office is often
people-driven, it will become a real mix of people- and
situation-driven cases for remote work. Therefore,…
Identify the new personalities of your co-workers once they
are remote:
• Performers in the office might become introverted
remote: be more advising and directing or even
controlling;
• The (t)extroverted co-workers (skilled writers) will become
the stars of remote work. They are real allies of the
manager;
• Social specialists might be lost without the social
environment of the office: hold them tight; call them
(video is even better); actively ask for their opinion.
If you feel, as a manager, missing the social environment of
the office, you also will need to motivate yourself: create e.g.
a weekly online breakfast with business agenda in order to
compensate the “isolation” from your team.

7. Communicate in a systematic way and dispatch meaningful
tasks

8. Communicate
in a systematic
way
Systematically follow the same template
(here the Tim Knoster approach)
Vision: what is the rationale
behind your message or behind
the task you are assigning?
Without explanation about the
vision, your co-workers might be
confused and not share your
goals.
Skills: what is the starting point,
who can do what, which part of
the task can be done by the team?
Who can? If the team or the co-
worker does not have the skills
required to get a valuable
outcome, you will get them
frustrated
Incentive: if there is no incentive
for all or part of the stakeholders,
your co-workers might be
reluctant to accomplish the task.
Resources: If you do not allocate
or enable the resources needed,
you will experience resistance
from your co-workers. Resistance
in remote work can become
isolation from own team.
Action plan: What do you need,
by when, from whom? What are
the intermediary steps? What if?
Without action plan, no result.

9. Dispatching
meaningful tasks
• Remote working and therefore managing is the best
test your processes can pass. In the case your processes
are not understood, respected, or know by your co-
workers, you need to either:
• Remind them; or
• Re-asses them; or
• Write proper ones; or
• All those options
• Meaningful tasks are fitting into the processes and the
processes enable the team to accomplish the tasks in a
successful way.
• If the tasks you dispatch are out of scope of the
processes or with an accepted outcome below the
standard of your processes, then you are setting new
standards and processes and create confusion if not chaos
in your organization.

11. Reminder for all of us: Challenges
of remote work
Remote work is full of challenges. Communication without workplace, a lack of structure, more
distractions, and isolation all threaten to overshadow the benefits of remote work.
Ask for help
• Never try to find the solution more
than three hours without
interaction with teammates or
manager.
• Read a lot (intranet, guidelines,
etc). Internal documents help a lot
• Use the Team tools (MS-teams,
Whatsapp, etc.)
Organise your day
• Organise routines: always start at
the same time, make lunch break
punctually, finish the day at the
same time. Communicate about
your working times
• You are not alone: adapt your
working time to the one of your
teammates
• Write down your daily tasks,
prioritise and accomplish them
Avoid distractions
• Procrastinate productively: your
job is the priority, housework, TV,
etc. have to procrastinated
• Dress up like in the office: shower,
clothes. This is part of being
productive
• Take breaks with purpose: away
from your laptop. 5 minutes for
you only.

12. Gilles Roux