Forget Gartner studies and erudite articles in HBR, the way we work remotely today has come about through guesswork and trial-and-error. It was never planned - which is why organizations have a hard time dealing with it.
Hybrid teams - some people working in the office, some at home or elsewhere - are increasingly common. But they pose unique challenges, so a wise leader needs to be aware of the dynamics that can make them work.
Technology is often used as an excuse for the poor management of remote teams. While it can certainly be a barrier, understanding team dynamics and offering training and resources can eliminate most of these. That just leaves the excuses.
The dynamics of working remotely are not the same as working face-to-face. So if you deal with a remote team in the same way as a co-located one, don't be surprised when the same leadership behaviors elicit different results.
With today's fluid working environment, team members often don't know the strengths and weaknesses of the people they work with. And paradoxically, the fact that we are all tethered together electronically can make it even harder to get to know them.
Far from being dominated by women juggling work and childcare, the ranks of remote workers in the US are overwhelmingly made up of men, a new survey has found.
Social interaction makes us happier and more productive. But that's a real issue when you're working remotely. So what can remote teams do to enhance interaction and create a good psychological environment to foster interaction and creativity?
There are three factors that make up a successful remote team. Each is equally important. And while a remote team won't function without technology, that's only one piece of the jigsaw.
How engaged in their work are the people in your team? How do you know? These questions are critical to all managers, whether they manage a team directly or have people spread across the planet over whom they don't have direct control.
This month, the old 'inputs vs outputs' question rears its head again in respect to flexible working. But as Chris Welford points out, it is delivery that counts, not the slavish adherence to a system or timetable.
Like it or not, trust is often a casualty of home working, with office-based workers liable to believe that their home-based colleagues aren't really working. So how can organisations overcome the challenges of working 'sight unseen'?
Do you want your people to be productive or do you prefer them to be creative? In a perfect world, of course, they'd be both. But the modern workplace - and short-sighted management - can make that an almost impossible goal.
It's pretty clear that remote working and collaboration can deliver significant cost savings. But top-line savings aren't the best way to assess whether something is working or not.
The millennial generation are less interested in how much a job pays than they are in having workplace flexibility and a sensible work-life balance, a new study has found.
If you are more productive than your coworkers, you'd expect to have a better chance of promotion, right? Not so fast. If you work remotely, you could be at a big disadvantage.
Let's set aside the hyseria about Yahoo's announcement that it wants more people to come into the office and quit working from home and make an educated guess at some of the challenges that led to this decision and its associated drama.
Far from marking the end of telecommuting, Marissa Mayer's demand that Yahoo's employees stop working remotely and get back into the office speaks volumes about the culture of the troubled Internet giant.
Google's Chief Financial Officer ruffled a few feather recently when he said that he believed working from home is not the best way to generate ideas and innovation. But is he right?
What do your remote team members and a lovesick football player have in common? They may both be guilty of seeing more in online relationships than is actually really there.
Leadership is a rare enough at the best of times. Leading people when you aren't in close contact with them is even harder. But it's not impossible. You simply have to understand the dynamics of working remotely and adjust.
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