Harvard Business Publishing

I'm intrigued by your thought that "Think of yourself as having 100% responsibility for making the relationship work with your virtual boss"

I would think that both participants in the relationship would have some responsibility to reach out to each other.

It seems to me that the boss needs reports to accomplish tasks and the motivated reports need management to set priorities, remove roadblocks and, if nothing else, to provide funding. In other words the two roles need each other.

I do think more communication is required and your thoughts on the mix of communication methods, with a bias towards two way communication, is probably right on the money.

I think you are incorrect in placing the burden on the employee.

I have seen both sides of the coin. I was earlier in a situation where I had a remote boss and unfortunatly, I fall in the catogary of Independent managers and I would say my stint ended in complete disaster. It took me almost a year for course correction.
Currently I am managing a team with people reporting to me in three continents. There are certain things I am trying to change for them. I try and organise a monthly viideo conference with the whole team and also try and send out regular communication to the team members.
I am also planning a team outing with representatives from other locations participating in this team outing.
Please also suggest other ways to keep the whole team together and engaged.

Warm regards

Parag

Whilst this topic is an increasingly important matter for many staff in the evolving workplace, I have to take issue with the suggestion of contacting a remote manager whilst travelling to or from the office.

Surely it is now recognised that the optimum working day for a competant manager is already being exceeded without giving such guidance to subordinates. Indeed, such out of hours contact may have the adverse effect of a managers phone being switched off - thus losing the security of availability of contact for subordinates.

Myself, I believe that the only way to deal with the expanding workplace is to evolve with technology. As the article suggests, more frequent contact has proven beneficial in my line of business. Rather than time consuming phone calls and voice mail messages, I find that the use of instant messaging to PDA's enables me to pass on snippets of information to subordinates quite effortlessly thus promoting the feeling of contact and support down the line. In fact my more local subordinates complained of feeling ineffectively supported more than those at a distance!

To make remote leadership work, some rules should be followed,

1. Authorize a certain right with your people's responsibilities,

2. Clearly communicate at a regular time and always have feedback from each other,

3. Confirmation is necessary to take any action,

4. No financial budget, no action.

Great article!
I have been complaining about my boss who is not very available. I also fit the description of the dangerous direct report who is very independent and diverge easily into my own projects. But it is really I that have the responsibility to seek out ways to get feedback and instructions from my boss.
Jason is right that both parties have responsibilities. But the point is, you cannot change other people, only yourself. So you are responsible for the communication results that you want to get. It is a question of willing yourself to do things that you are not used to and feels uncomfortable to get better results. I will right away ask for time with my boss to discuss the next steps in several projects.

I agree totally to this: "the consequences of getting disconnected will mostly be borne by you".
Working in virtual team, staff needs to be proactive in building a relationship with the boss (especially a new boss), and face-to-face contact is crucial to understand the boss as a person (being biased). You can't achieve this through telecons or emails only.
If you happen to work with a biased boss, early engagement will help to minimize consequence.
If you are working with a good boss, you are lucky. If your boss is not a good boss, you have to manage him. Because boss is boss!

This topic is quite relevant in the present senario when a team in an organisation consist of members located in different places and timezones. I feel the organisation should be more sensitive towards appointing a manager for a such a team. Someone who has the experience,like Parag, who know what it takes to work remote based. Also team training on effective communication can also make a big difference to the success of such a team. I am working from home and knows how difficult it is when you need to have a communication with your manager who doesn't have time to even pick his phone because of his busy schedule. So the onus lies both on you and the manger to make things work.

Few points in this article rightly points out some of the pain points in the remote leadership. I think most of use can map many things said in the article and comments directly or indirectly to once past and present. As some of you rightly pointed out, the success is a co-coordinative effort of both remote boss and you. There should be good Organization controls systems planed for these kinds of engagements.

Few things which mostly become hurdles in these kinds of engagements are:
1. Remote manager getting biased towards local report's than remote reports.
2. Assumption that all the geographic teams have the same kind of work culture and market conditions.
3. No well defined org chart, definition of roles, responsibilities and ownerships.
4. Not giving right credit to all the stake holders.
5. Insufficient information passed on by remote boss to get some job done.
6. Not giving sufficient information about the eco system why some thing is changed by remote boss to the reporting teams, leaving them in confusion and obeying the instructions. This will kill the innovative instincts of the team.
7. Remote teams not being transparent about the issues being faced to the remote boss.
8. Remote teams not understanding the priority of tasks putting the remote Boss in delivery trouble.

Easy way to overcome these hurdles is understand the personality of your boss (remote). This will help to decide the factor of “decision making”. What will your boss like –“informed decision making” or “consultive decision making”. Act accordingly for success.