Can Executive Coaching Help You Lead Your Remote Workforce More Effectively?

The trend toward hybrid work environments is here to stay with many companies planning to stick to remote working for the foreseeable future. This means companies and executives require a meticulously devised strategy to manage an increasingly remote workforce efficiently and in a way that doesn’t reduce productivity.

While many executives are gifted leaders who are just as good at managing a remote workforce as they are at managing an in-office workforce, the new focus on hybrid may still create a daunting challenge. After all, we have never worked remotely for such an extended period before with this much uncertainty about what the future will look like. Many executives can find themselves without a game plan.

Executive coaching is a reliable way for executives to learn how to manage a remote workforce more efficiently. Executive coaching can teach leaders how to motivate a workforce to exceed the companies’ expectations and goals. A skilled executive coach can show an executive how she can become the link that binds a physically remote team and make them into a single, efficient unit.

Micromanaging is the greatest enemy

Micromanaging a remote workforce will lead to disengagement that can result in a loss of trust among team members. Executive coaching can focus leaders on how to be flexible, set clear goals and expectations, and encourage needed collaboration when the team is dispersed.

Be a leader

Executives manage the workforce more effectively when they focus on being leaders instead of managers. While the two may sound the same, there is an important difference between a leader and a manager. A leader is someone who tries to influence collaboration to obtain better results, while a manager is more concerned about following a process to achieve the result. The best executive coaches teach executives to think and behave like leaders.

Trust your team

It may seem like more inspection and oversight is a good idea given the uncertainty of leading a remote team. However, it is counter-productive. Conversely, executives need to trust their teams by letting them figure out ways to tackle any given problem on their own. By communicating expectations and goals to the team but leaving the ‘how’ for them to figure out, you show that you trust them. This increases the chances of meeting your goals dramatically.

Set clear boundaries

Just because your team now operates from home, that doesn’t mean they are always available. Executive coaches teach leaders how to make and maintain healthy boundaries, which has the added benefit of promoting a healthy work-life balance in employees.

Face-to-face time is a must

It is vital that your team stays connected to you via video conferences. Yes, you heard that right: video conferences. A big part of the office environment is camaraderie; it is where people work and socialize. So, sometimes calls don’t have to be about work. They can include time to talk about personal things or they can expressly be about socializing and just having casual chats. Many times, a simple coffee or happy hour call has multiple benefits to leaders by keeping teams engaged. The goal of these types of meetings is to engage in an activity that is not related to work.

Ready to take remote working to the next level?

WJM coaches executives who can lead and inspire their remote people efficiently and with the agility to meet the company’s expectations and goals. Our coaches create a safe environment for executives or potential leaders of tomorrow to grow and learn.