Distance Leader

Occasionally, I run across an article that reflects my thoughts as a distance leader and distance worker. A couple of months ago, Gina Boedeker, the founder and CEO of the Boedeker Group, wrote a fantastic article about the misconceptions that others may have of work-at-home employees and roles. Here's a link to the article in LinkedIn.com: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-do-you-when-work-from-home-spoiler-alert-some-best-boedeker/

This week on the Distance Leader Podcast show 0114, we’re talking about some great first steps in your role as a distance leader. Here are some of our guiding questions:

How do I transition to a distance leader for employees I have never met? What can I do to “shrink the distance” between my employees and me?

This week on the Distance Leader Podcast show 0113, we’re talking about the expectations that distance leaders have for their teams. Here are some of our guiding questions: How do you maximize the time you have with part-time employees? How do you encourage effective work behaviors for team members who may not be comfortable working virtually?

This week on the Distance Leader Podcast show 0112, we’re talking about building appropriate team and employee expectations as a distance leader. Here are some of our guiding questions:

How can a distance leader communicate expectations?

How can a distance leader focus on positive, self-reinforcing interactions?

What are some of the expectations do your employees have for you?

What are some of the expectations you have for your boss(es)? This week's show addresses the concepts of hidden or discussed expectations as a distance leader... not an easy task!

This week on the DistanceLeader podcast, we’re going to take a look at strategies for preparing a team for distance working.

By examining the pros and cons of both collocated and distance working, as well as exploring different types of virtual working strategies, our conversation leads to some of the stressors that are unique to distance working employees. Whether developing trust, communication strategies, or expectation agreements, the resources discussed in this episode can be applied to any leadership environment.

This week on the Distance Leader Podcast show 0110, we’re talking about different definitions of performance and leadership competencies. Here are some of our guiding questions:

How are competencies used for employees in a meaningful way?

How are competencies used for leadership roles?

How do competencies differ for distance leaders than face-to-face leaders?

Competencies as a framework

Often organizations develop competencies as a way to measure… something. It’s not quite clear, but the goal is to recognize behaviors and habits that lead to business success. Remember, in Episode 0109, we discussed what competencies were and what they were not.

“Grading” employees in an organization is part of the process. Unless you are self-employed, most organizations feel that there has to be a way to identify strong performing employees versus those who are struggling in their roles.

The Goldilocks zone for competenciesCompetencies should live in the “Goldilocks” zone: Not too broad, not too narrow. They should be just right. However, not every role in the organization fits easily in the same competencies for everyone. Competencies should describe the goal behaviors and skills of employees. If they are too broad, they are something like “position vision statements,” and if they are too narrow, the competencies become a job description.

Competencies for leaders and distance leadersLeadership competencies have been studied for years, and leadership can almost always be described as roles that are fluid. Let’s face it: “solving business problems” is hard to define. How do you build a competency around “adapting to change”?

Some researchers have taken an even more general approach: Green and McCann (2011) placed more specific concepts around leadership competencies, including honesty, respect, integrity, and trust, as well as practicing those expectations that the leader wished to find in subordinates.

Somewhat different approach, but still a valid one depending on the organization. This was a behavioral leadership goal followed by “commitments,” which are the skills related to the behavior. 

There’s a whole field around leadership competency training, since flexibility and adaptability to multiple work environments is a common characteristic of business.

Another approach is to develop a continuum of behaviors that support a business competency. 

Competencies and professional development

One researcher team  found that there was a gap in the literature in the comparison of how professional development in competencies actually improve leadership competencies(Dragoni, Tesluk, Russell, & Oh, 2009). After all, shouldn’t leadership training actually make a difference in both skills and behaviors? What they found in their follow-up research was interesting: People participated in professional development to learn new skills, but also to avoid negative judgements about their work quality.

Whether clearly stated or not, learning goals to build competency were perceived as more valuable when new managerial roles or opportunities could involve the new skills available in training.

Why train someone on a new skill that doesn’t apply to their role, or a role they are moving into? 

Are you helping your employees make good professional development choices, and then giving them opportunities to use those new skills?

Bottom line

When looking at competencies, try to see the “Goldilocks” zone where the competencies are not too narrow and not too broad.

Collaborate with your employees and your team on what the company-issued competencies should be, the approach of developing a behavioral target followed by skill-level commitments may be an effective tool.

Think about competencies and skills when evaluating professional development.

References

Dragoni, L., Tesluk, P. E., Russell, J. E. A., & Oh, I.-S. (2009). Understanding managerial development: integrating developmental assignments, learning orientation, and acc

This week on the Distance Leader Podcast show 0109, we’re talking about different definitions of performance and leadership competencies. Here are some of our guiding questions:

How is a competence different than a skill or an aptitude?

What are some common competency approaches currently used in work environments?

You’ll hear it more and more in HR conversations: Competency-based hiring, competency definitions, and competency-level training. What exactly does the term “competency” mean? To uncover the definition, we’ll need to take a trip to the past.

What is a competency?

The short answer is simple: Outcomes-relevant measures of knowledge, skills, abilities, and traits and/or motives. This is a definition developed in 1973 by David McClelland. In 1973, McClelland questioned the reliability and validity of intelligence and aptitude tests in his paper. At the time, the United States had invested in the idea of standardized tests to assess and track students into colleges and employment. For example, police officers in Boston were being given vocabulary tests to determine if they were “right” for the job. That would have been great if the vocabulary was for police-related terms. However, the terms were totally unrelated to police work. What, then, were they measuring?

Alfred Binet and French Schooling

In the early 1900s, Alfred Binet was commissioned by the French government to explore student intelligence. Whether it was for students who needed additional support or were somehow more competent than their peers, there was no easy way to measure intelligence. Until Binet developed his approach to measuring intelligence, there was not really a good way to measure innate intelligence. French law required every student to attend school, so knowing which students would need remediation was extremely important. Binet and Theodore Simon developed a “mental age” approach that was designed to show which students were “below,” “above,” or “at” the physical age in their demonstrated intelligence. 

Since Binet’ and Simon’s work was heavily connected to schools, the concept of intelligence was also connected to grades and grading. Even though Binet himself did not believe that his testing was effective in every situation, as intelligence changed over time and could be impacted by something as simple as vocabulary differences, his theories were adopted with great abandon in the United States. Lewis Terman, working at Stanford University, developed a hybrid of the intelligence test, called the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale. You probably know it as the intelligence quotient, or IQ, test: The IQ score was calculated by dividing the test taker’s mental age by his or her chronological age and then multiplying this number by 100. 

The long arms of the (intelligence) law

Schools in France and the US jumped on board with this quickly. Having a way to objectively measure students either before or during their entry into the educational system was considered a real advantage, especially since students who were not “smarter” on the IQ tests never had the option to take any higher-level courses. Grading became a corollary to IQ tests, indicating whether or not students were performing at an “average” level or above or below the average. The military used IQ tests to identify which roles recruits could fulfill, and colleges and universities decided that they could also be part of the process by developing standardized tests.

The roots of standardized tests go back to the beginning of the 1900s, and there are numerous court cases and research studies that show the bias of standardized tests have on English learners, people from poorer backgrounds, and people with less robust education. Whether it’s vocabulary, reading and writing skills, or experiential processing skills, standardized tests have been used to “grade” people for over 100 years.

Meanwhile, back to David McClelland in 1973…

McClelland realized that traits or skills were too

This week on the Distance Leader Podcast show 0108, we’re talking about the leadership changes for distance working. Here are some of our guiding questions:

How has leadership changed to make distance leadership a more common approach?What do you need to think about if you are new to distance leading?

Let’s first look at how leadership has changed now that distance working has entered the modern workplace:Higher or more connected expectationsNew leaders are expected to be much more technology-conversant than they were in the past. There is almost no time to train on systems, and some large organizations don’t even have training programs for their new leaders. Many new leaders are also expected to maintain team performance or have connections already in place to prevent dips in team performance. This is a reflection of faster-moving job changes in many industries.More accountability (read: metrics)Data collection for almost every task means that many companies are developing data-related evaluation strategies in ways that are perhaps not productive. For example, in one job, I was evaluated on the cost of my flights to work with customers, regardless of the timeline to buy my tickets or my destination. I had no control over this, but I was held accountable for it.Data overloadThe other side of so many metrics is the inability to figure out what should receive your attention. We all know people who have “analysis paralysis,” and you may be one of those people. As a leader, one of the new critical skills is understanding what should be monitored and what should be ignored.Communication overloadAs if data isn’t enough, there is a steady stream of email input coming into your inbox. Because many leadership metrics include “responsiveness” as an implied or explicit expectation, the email inbox has become a quick-response tool for many leaders. I’m guilty of this, and it’s because the sooner I can deal with the items arriving in my inbox, the sooner I can get to my “real” work. Beyond the inbox, there are newsletters, memos, websites, and group notifications that also demand leadership attention. (And don’t even get me started on social media!)Blended employee locations (in-office, collocated, virtual)Of course, if your team is a blended team of in-office, collocated, or virtual employees, then you have to figure out strategies that bring the team together for critical activities, either virtually or in-person. Having a blended team but an in-office leader even presents its own challenges, and the converse is true, too. What happens when the team is located together and the leader is elsewhere, either in another office or at a customer site?

Employee diversity (multiple countries and/or cultures). As a modern leader, you have to be prepared to support employees who are very different from you. Furthermore, you need to be conversant on the cultural expectations that come with leading a distance team. Supporting cultural harmony is a challenge, and has grown in importance in the last generation of leadership development.

Multiple employee responsibilities that compete for time. The role of leadership used to be simply working with employees to solve problems and facilitate business activities. With all of the other challenges we just discussed, finding time to work directly with employees can look like an insurmountable problem. If you have the right tools, though, the employees quickly swing into focus, and you’re able to concentrate on the right priorities without ignoring the wrong things and paying attention to the right things.

What’s new for distance leaders?Shifting employee expectationsOne of the largest drivers for distance leadership changes comes from the employees themselves. Whether it’s due to changing employee demographics, large teams working remotely, or new expectations of work styles, distance leaders have a few new things to address as leaders.“Right” to work from homeSome employees feel that they hav

This week on the DistanceLeader podcast, we’re going to take a look at developing effective criteria for distance work as both a leader and for your team. Being a good distance leader means the development of good expectations that you can share with your employees and peers about who can work from a distance and why that makes business sense.

What kind of work prompts distance environments? The answer usually falls into two categories:

Any situation where geography or time are not as important to accomplish the task

When geography or time is critically important to accomplish the task

What does that mean in reality, though?

When Geography and Time ARE NOT as important

In work situations where employees don’t need to physically interact with one another, or when the team needs to be able to span time zones or work shifts, distance working (and leadership) is a potential approach for getting work accomplished. Some examples might be work environments where employees are on-call, where relative quiet or a meditative approach is needed, or where all interaction can be accomplished through distance work tools, like teleconferencing. Help desk support personnel, perhaps literally “on call,” may not need to work in a specific work environment, for example. Another role might be writers, artists, creative developers, programmers, or data management personnel, where the technology is more critical than the personal interaction.

When Geography and Time ARE more important

In the case of consultants, sales people, or deployment teams, the entire business opportunity may be around the needs of the customer(s). While the management may be at central office, employees may be working at a client site or traveling among client sites. Home care nurses, for example, fit this category because to do the job, the nurses must travel from location to location. Sales teams are often distance teams, because meeting with the client may require on-site meetings and interactions.

Other distance working considerations

The work requirements are only one dimension of planning for a virtual work team. Other reasons for pursuing a distance work environment include a wide variety of characteristics:

The personnel components of doing the work. Do you have employees with physical impairments? Unique skills that are not available with other in-office staff (such as a native language translator or specialized technician)? Periodic personnel requirements related to seasonal work?

The company may also be the reason for distance work environments, such as a reduction of the physical office facility, dispersion of a workforce group to satellite offices, or even an emerging distance working policy.

The industry may also be one that includes virtual work characteristics. For example, consider military base dispersion around the world and all of the services that support the surrounding communities. If you work in an industry with 24×7 support requirements like e-commerce, you may also need virtual work environments to address customer needs at any time.

That’s really only the beginning of the discussion around virtualizing the work environment. As a leader, developing the business reasons and unique cases where distance working makes sense for your team is as unique as your team can be. Helping set the expectations for both your team and your leaders may require you to consider the existing expectations around distance workers, how HR works for distance employees, changes in productivity for virtual teams, and clearly evaluate and define the business reasons that make sense in your organization.

Finally, we discuss the communication tools in place to support dispersed teams. As a leader, a primary role is to model and demonstrate the effective use of communication tools, and choose to meet in person when it makes sense. Employee evaluations should also be carefully considered to avoid biases for employees in the office