From the course: Leading at a Distance (2019)

Understanding what success looks like at a distance

From the course: Leading at a Distance (2019)

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Understanding what success looks like at a distance

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- Angela is a client who leads a team of customer service reps who work from home. As you might expect, they have a number of individual metrics, like: number of calls taken, calls completed on the first dial, number of calls escalated, and so on. But there are other goals, too. Angela needs this team to work together, to share information, to answer questions for each other, and generally, to support each other. What she's noticed is since they went to work from home, the individual metrics are good, maybe even better than they were before. But the team dynamics piece, the sharing with each other, the talking with each other, the encouraging each other, not going quite so well. Leadership is certainly about outcomes. But Angela's story is important because there's more than one kind of outcome. There's more than just the individual metrics that we must be aware of. As a long-distance leader, you must be aware that there are different kinds of outcomes. In fact, there are three kinds. First, there are organizational outcomes. We must make them clear. Our team members must understand where the organization is going and how what they do is connected to that. Second, there are team outcomes. This is where Angela's team is having trouble. They're not completely clear, they're not tracking and reviewing them, we need to make sure that there's no signs of confusion here, and then people are completely clear on what's expected. Lastly, the personal outcomes. You might be surprised, but with a remote team, this won't be where your challenges come. People will be highly effective at reaching their individual outcomes. They'll be connected, they'll make those things happen. We must diagnose where these things are least clear and then take a step today to improve that clarity or to create a process for creating ongoing improvement.

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