With the increase of remote work, team leaders and directors have to adapt to managing their employees and being leaders without face to face interactions.
Facing these challenges may be discouraging, but necessary, due to the various benefits of virtual work. There’s no need to feel lost, there are multiple strategies you can include in your daily interactions with your team to be a good leader, we share with you a few of them:
- Negotiating deadlines: this implies discussing with your virtual assistant their availability and capacity to do certain tasks. By replacing the conventional practice of dictating a deadline with the freedom of the employees to negotiate, taking into consideration different factors, employees feel more committed to reaching the deadline and you can develop a better work relationship. The flexibility in the negotiation of the deadline depends also from the urgency of the tasks, which is something that should be expressed openly.
- Having open conversations around expectations: this strategy is perfect if you’re trying to identify growing opportunities in your employees and specific abilities that need to be developed. Talking with your remote workers about their challenges can also give you some feedback and help you adjust the distribution of tasks to the appropriate employee.
- Avoiding micromanaging: remote work can trigger insecurities around the work that needs to be done and the way your employees fulfill your expectations. Although micromanaging can seem like a normal response, it can affect negatively the working environment, as employees will feel the lack of trust upon them and you won’t be experiencing the benefits of delegating these tasks, because the constant supervision will be taking a lot of the time you were trying to save by hiring them.
- Make sure they have the necessary tools: if a certain tool or program is necessary to fulfill certain tasks, make sure it’s always available for your workers. Because of the distance, you won’t be able to monitor that closely, but if you develop the appropriate communication channels, these needs will be expressed to you. During periodical meetings you can try to take the time to ask if there’s any tool that’s missing to make work more effective.
With the proper accompaniment, virtual workers, particularly virtual assistants can be a great asset for your small business. Eureka offers you trained virtual assistants with the skills that you need to improve your business. If you want to know more, you can schedule an appointment.
