Effective leadership of remote teams

Complex organisational structures, dispersed staff and flexible working practices are increasingly common; many businesses rely on leaders getting the best from team members who are not based in the same location.

Managing teams can be challenging in any environment. When they are dispersed in multiple locations the challenge is amplified. Remote teams will be more likely to reveal weaknesses in the team’s way of working.

Managing remote or virtual teams is similar to managing regular teams, but requires greater emphasis on building trust and confidence, communication, performance management, workflow processes and effective use of technology. 

Managers responsible for the performance of remote teams need to understand what makes remote teams different to co-located teams and how to apply best practice in ‘leading from a distance’. 

Programme objective 

Managers will leave the programme significantly more competent in the skills and behaviours required to lead teams remotely.

Learning Outcomes

Remote leaders will:

• Have a clear view of the challenges of leading remotely.
• Understand the key things that managers and leaders need to know about remote teams in order to become truly effective:
• Have an increased self awareness of their personal leadership style and how this impacts others in remote leadership situations.
• Understand communication and cultural issues in remote teams.
• A simple model to which they can return when facing remote leadership challenges back in the workplace.
• A toolkit of simple techniques that they can use to secure the best performance from their team members.
• Make commitments to implement changes to communication, ways of working and decision-making in remote teams and track the results.

Programme Benefits

Leading Change developed the Leading From A Distance (LFAD) programme specifically to address the challenges associated with leading geographically dispersed teams.

We use highly interactive exercises to enable managers to gain an insight into their current style of team leadership, contrast it with best practice and understand how to apply that knowledge to their own situation.

We invite managers to commit to positive outcomes related to the effectiveness of their remote teams. These provide a means of tracking the differences made after the programme. Managers then return to work with a toolkit and action plan that can be applied immediately.

Managers will also be encouraged to share commitments so that they can provide one another peer support and collaborate in developing performance.

Programme Outline

The LFAD programme has a flexible modular format and can be modified to meet client requirements. The optimum programme includes some preparatory work and consists of up to two modules with coaching interventions and review sessions. 

The LFAD programme combines group and individual work. It is based on action learning principles to maximise the chances of genuine and sustained behavioural change.  Delegates will be expected to try out and evaluate new behaviours, tools and techniques between deliberate interventions to ensure that improvements are sustained and continue to add value.  

Managers will regroup with their peers to review performance, share experiences and best practice. Delegates must be able to commit to attending the workshops and the action learning programme.

Contact us to discuss detailed programme contents. 

Workshop Leaders

Sean Riches

Sean Riches is a change management and organisational effectiveness consultant. He has worked for global organisations including Unilever, Oracle and Paramount Films, facilitating programmes with delegates from over 20 countries across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. His success as a consultant is based on nearly 20 year’s commercial experience; many spent in front line management roles. He has worked on change programmes in civil aviation and road transport organisations, both as a line manager and as a change programme leader. As a result his style, which is lively and engaging, is firmly based on rapid application to the work place.

Mark Bouch

Mark’s area of expertise is helping executive teams to execute strategy effectively in order to deliver more value.  He is a collaborative, challenging and reliable consultant who has excellent references for helping client teams to deliver consistently outstanding results. Since entering consultancy in 2001 he has established a highly successful track record in financial services, premium consumer goods, publishing and pharmaceutical sectors. 

About Leading Change Limited

We launched Leading Change Limited to help organisations to liberate the potential of their strategy, people and operations in order to deliver more valuable results.

Leading Change brings together the best consulting talent available in a forward looking, customer focused and cross sector organisational performance consultancy. More details of how Leading Change Limited helps clients to implement their strategy more effectively can be found here.

Leading Change Limited

53 Davies Street

London

W1K 5J

Tel: 020 3170 8026

Fax: 020 3170 8027