Long-Distance Leadership

On this week’s podcast, we will be discussing “Long-Distance Leadership”

As a leader, your job is to get results and inspire other people. The long-distance leader needs to be intentional about focusing on others while we’re leading from a distance.

Transcript

Good day and welcome to the leading with nice daily. My name is Mathieu Yuill in this week, we’re going to be talking about long-distance leadership. Now, what I mean by that is obviously what a lot of us are experiencing, where we’re working from home. And our boss might be around the corner, but our meetings are virtual and not in person. And today I want to talk about the very first thing. I believe you should make a priority as a leader. And that’s the coaching relationship you have with your reports. Now there’s three reasons. Somebody will accept coaching from you. And the first one is position. So you are their boss. You have been with the company you’ve been assigned. You’ve been declared as somebody who should know better, who should know what’s going on. The second reason is expertise. People accept, accept coaching from you because you have expertise in that area.

You’ve been there, seen there, done it. You’ve introduced strategy and it’s worked really well. And the third reason is relationship. You know, they trust you. You’re, you’re a valuable member of their circle. They understand what you’re saying. They believe that what you want to do is to make them better. So as the youngest in his leader, as somebody who’s doing this virtually two things, remember one check-in, don’t check up when you meet with somebody, make sure that you really are checking in. You want to know how they’re doing. You’re not being okay. I want to make you better. I want to fix you up. And the second thing is, make it really intentional and almost like a process. So be sure to say, okay, this is what we’re going to accomplish today. We’re going to set this for tomorrow. We’re going to have a coaching session.

Here’s what I want to accomplish. So it’s not just like a, Oh, we met in a coaching session, broke out. That’s not helpful when you’re long-distance. So this week we’re talking about the long-distance leader for more than this topic, though, visit leadingwithnice.com where we want to help you inspire others, build loyalty and get results, Talk to you again tomorrow.

Good day, and welcome to the leading with nice daily. My name is Mathieu Yuill and this week we’re talking about the long-distance leader leading, even when you’re maybe around the corner or down the street from the people that you are leading, but you’re right now, we’re, we’re leaving virtually. We’re immediately out of the office. Some of us won’t be going back to the office for a long time, and this is how it’s going to be. So today I want to talk to you about the value of putting others first on, focusing on others.

You know, one of my mentors once told me that they got the most done on their list when they helped everybody else out. And it’s only two minutes. So I can’t go into the nitty-gritty of how that worked. But here’s a few things that happens when you focus on others. First, you know, paradoxically leadership is actually about other people. It’s not about you. So as a leader, when we’re leaving long distance, here’s a few things you can concentrate on. First in meetings, ask how other people are doing. Start with that. Just check in with them, not in a coaching way, but ask how they’re doing, focusing on them. First. The second thing you’ll want to consider is asking them, how can you help them accomplish their goals as a leader, your job is to get results through your team. So what are you doing to be intentional about getting results through your team?

And the third thing you can do is make sure everybody on your team feels ape heard when we’re meeting virtually, you want to make sure intentionally that everybody who’s on that team has had a chance to speak into something that they want to speak into. You know, how difficult that is when we’re in the same room together. Now imagine how easy it is for the person to have not only a desk between you, but now a computer monitor and a keyboard, and maybe even the new button. So they don’t have to even be heard. We all need people that fill that role on a team, but it doesn’t mean we should ignore them or push them to the side. Your job as a leader is to focus on others while we’re leading from a distance from our this topic, visit leadingwithnice.com where we want to help you inspire others, build loyalty, and get results. Talk to you again tomorrow.

Good day, and welcome to the leading with nice daily. My name is Mathieu Yuill and this week we’re talking about long-distance leading, leading in this time where many of us are working from home, we’re working virtually with our teams. You may be around the corner or down the street, but still, there is instead of just maybe an office or a water cooler or a boardroom table between us. There’s a computer, a monitor, the mute button, etc. Now, yesterday, I encouraged you to focus on others today. I want to talk about you as the leader and you focusing on you. So I want to encourage you to do three things. The first thing I would like you to do is after this video, we’ll take notes, write down the three things. And after this video, just write down some simple observations for yourself to reflect on the first is this.

I’d love you to write down. Well, how have you changed as a leader? How has your leadership style changed in this online virtual world? Are you more impatient? Are you more patient? Do you have more time to think of other things you have less time? My brother in law and I were just talking the other day about how these informal meetings that used to happen in the water cooler and hallways are just popping in don’t happen. So now your calendar is crazy scheduled. It’s changed our leadership styles. The second thing I’d like you to write down and reflect on is what do you do when your leadership in this virtual world is not working? How do you handle that? How do you approach it? What do you, what you do? Just, I don’t have an, I don’t have the, your answer. I don’t know it, but if you’re aware of it, it’s, it’s half the battle. And the third thing I want you to talk about and write down for yourself is what stressing you out at leading from a distance, leading from far away. Even if you might be physically in the same city or close, what’s stressing you out, reflecting on those three things. It will really help you identify when they start to happen and you can start building a response for it. But for more on this topic, visit leadingwithnice.com where we want to help you inspire others, build loyalty, and get results. Talk to you again tomorrow.

Good day, and welcome to the leading with nice daily. My name is Mathieu Yuill and this week we are talking about being a leader in distance. So you might be around the corner or down the street from your colleagues and your reports, but between you and them is a computer, a keyboard, a mute button, a camera, a lot of things that just didn’t exist when we worked in the same office. And today I want to talk about probably the most important thing that I’ve worked on with organizations, both in real life and virtually and that’s trust. How do you build trust in this virtual world? Three really quick high level overviews, the first and best way to build trust with the team and their virtual is praising in public. So when you have these meetings online, your zoom chats or whatnot, or Microsoft teams or, or Skype or ICQ, I’m not sure who’s using that.

praise in public. When you have all those little boxes on the screen, distribute praise. The second thing you should do in public is delegate. Give out directions and orders, give out the delegation. People who don’t receive the assignment will at least know that it’s happening and it’s not behind closed doors. And it’s not because there’s some special secret or there’s favorites being played. And the third thing I want you to do to really focus on building trust is start using technology. You know, it’s not just about zoom, it’s not just about Google docs. Use these other online platforms to have a Q and a, a Wiki start pointing people to these online tools that we can use to build trust that we can interact really easily and really transparently like you. I can’t knock on your door anymore and poke my head in and ask a question, but I can do a Q and on a forum somewhere, right? That allows me to answer it. You know, you ask it in the morning. Maybe I get around to it in the afternoon or the next day, or it’ll go so far to building trust and just really open up transparency in your team. If they can access you in ways that in new ways, but accomplishing what they used to. When we worked in the same building together for more on this topic, visit leadingwithnice.com where we want to help you inspire others, build loyalty, and get results. Talk to you again tomorrow.

Good day, and welcome to the leading with nice daily. My name is Mathieu Yuill and this week we’re talking about leading at distance leading virtually. We might be physically close. Your colleagues and reports might be around the corner or down the street, but in between them and you, there’s a keyboard mouse monitor, mute button camera, unlike in the office, when there is maybe a boardroom table or your desk, before we go into it today, though, I just want to let you know next week, I’m announcing a really exciting project for leading with nice. And I hope you listen on Monday to hear that announcement and take it advantage of it as well. So today, the last thing I want to talk about being the long-distance leader is really how you are organizing you and your team and their time and boundaries. So the first question I have is as a leader, are you the only source for answers?

Does everybody have to come to you if they do? That’s a problem for you. That’s going to lead to burn out very quickly, especially in this online world. Email is already a problem before now. It’s even a bigger problem. So a few things you can do, you can delegate certain responsibilities, give the information to other people you can release, which is great leaders, great leaders, help others lead. You can use the tools we talked about yesterday, maybe an online forum, a Wiki. It’ll take some time to input there, but the questions live on forever and other people who can source them an answer. You’re not answering the same question five times. And the next day I want you to do is set boundaries for yourself. Are you answering emails and voicemails and doing work all hours of the night? Is it because you have kids?

It probably is. We talked about this a few weeks ago. I have a great webinar, on the YouTube channel. Definitely check it out, managing burnout during COVID-19 it’s called, but managing burnout period, working at home is great when the kids are there as well, but you need to set boundaries for yourself. You need to say, I am not going to work from here to here. I am not available. I will not answer emails during this time. I’m going to turn off my chat messenger or whatever I have and just focus on me. And the third thing I want you to do is send your people on vacation. You yourself, take a vacation. Many people. When I speak to them, a lot of clients haven’t had a day off since 2019. And if you’re not listening to this today, it’s currently June 2020.

Many people haven’t had one day off since, since, since last year in over six months start insisting people start taking holidays. We’re halfway through the year. Have they used any vacation at all? We need vacation. We need time away. And you yourself, if you take time away, turn off your phone. You know, I do a practice when our family, we like going to Disney. I actually leave my phone in the safe. When we go to the park and men, the how present I feel with my kids, I felt like I feel like a jerk from before. I remember one time he took a phone call in tomorrow land and Disney world about a publication issue. And it was important, but man, it was not missing a ride with your family important. And I can’t get that back. I can never get that back that time. So give yourself vacation, turn yourself off. That is what leading for yourself and others at a distance looks like for more on this topic. Visit leadingwithnice.com where we want to help you inspire others, build loyalty and get results. Talk to you again next week.