Is it harder to play basketball than to play handball?
If you’ve been playing handball for the past two decades, probably.
Is it more difficult to run a marathon than to excell in 100m sprints?
If you’ve only ever done speedwork over short distances, very likely.
Is it harder to lead a remote team than to lead in an office environment?
If you only started leading remotely during the pandemic, that’s how it feels.
Is it harder, though, or do you have less practice?
If you are leading a distributed team today, chances are you were never a team member in a distributed team. It’s very likely you don’t have a lot of examples to draw on. You were usually led in person - and now you have to figure out how to do this remotely, often without a lot of structure or guidance.
Of course, there’s great resources out there on the logistics of leading a remote team. There’s no shortage of tactics and best-practices - and yet, that may not be helpful if you don’t know where to start, or where to focus on first.
So, here’s a little tool you can use to figure out what you are already doing great, where you may have some blind spots - and what to look for. This is what the Remote Leadership Radar looks like:
By scoring yourself on three categories for each leadership skill you can quickly figure out where you excel and where you are struggling (or maybe you can already see that from the example phrases).
Then, you can find solutions for the areas where you feel lost - and use your areas of excelence to shape your personal leadership style. Worst case, you get the confirmation that you are doing a pretty god job all things considered.
Next week, me and the amazing Rowena from
are going to dissect the radar in a special Remote Leadership Masterclass. Sign up here to download the framework and save your spot:And feel free to share your radar with me in advance. I am happy to include some real examples (anonymized of course) into the conversation.
See you next week :)