10 Tips To Becoming The Remote Manager Everyone Loves

Best Manager Certificate

Remote managers have it tough.  They have to get others to cooperate and be on board with their projects and to like them even though they may never meet these people face-to-face, and even though these people may not even be part of the same organization!  While a big part of making this happen is using the right technology, what’s more important is being able to convey a human touch in spite of the technology.  Three excellent principles for the skilled remote manager include:

  • Erring on the side of overcommunicating
  • Intentionally getting to know others as people and allowing them to get to know you as a person
  • Being aware of and respectful of other’s work procedures, situations, and environments

The following tips, based on these principles, I’ve shamelessly lifted from voices of remote management experience:

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Cisco WebEx: “Little to no Work-Life Balance”

Wow.  I would like to go on record right now as stating that at VSee, any work-life imbalance is due purely to our fanaticism and not slave-driving!  :)

That image is taken from glassdoor.com, a site for job hunters and recruiters, which also posts employee reviews so the candidates can research whether they’d like to apply to a company or not.

I don’t know if it’s because we’re smaller or, uh…hmm.  Never mind.  I’m not at all sure why we’re able to sustain a good work-life balance here and they aren’t.

Roughly half of our company works remotely.  With only a couple exceptions, those remaining are hybrid workers: Sometimes they come into the office; sometimes they work from home.  Those of us with two-income families often trade part of our work day for part of our evening to pick kids up from daycare/school/soccer.  In the case of one family where both parents work at VSee, they usually work from home and have their child in their lap while talking with other VSee employees.  Add the previously mentioned dose of fanaticism and most of us do some work late at night as well–by choice!

Not to rub it in for the “Territory Account Manager”, but our lovely east coast employees got to happily work from home while you were forced to go to the office in the snow.  And a couple of them lease office space for those times they wish to have that environment!

I must also question TAM’s assertion  of “Best in breed product.”  I honestly believe VSee is far better equipped for doing business “Any where.  Any time.”  (I’ll admit, we’re still working on “Any device.”)  Multiple people can share multiple documents from multiple locations ALL AT THE SAME TIME…something you just can’t do with WebEx.  And you can be talking with “Joe”, decide the two of you need to also talk to “Amy”, and call her in without sending an email invite.  You really don’t know how important those two capabilities are for maintaining a more natural workflow until you’ve used them.  (Shameless plug time:  Go try it out! then watch the demo video on the homepage.)

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