Are You Remotely Successful?

More and more work is being performed by virtual teams. Leaders are leading their teams from remote locations. If you are like many people, remote relationships are part of your working life.
Are you successful in your remote relationships? We’ve observed that many of the bad habits of cubicle life get brought into remote working relationships. For example, people count on proximity rather than intentionality to “win friends and influence people.”
This is a relationship economy. Who you know can make a difference in your next promotion or career move. Who you know can make the difference in successfully completing a project.
Improve Your Remote Relationships:

• Say it, Mean it, Do it. Say what you mean and do what you say.  Your word establishes your credibility and it builds others trust. Trust is broken when you do not keep your word. So make a written list of your commitments and keep them.
• Stay Positive – people who hear you on the phone miss out on visual communication cues. Those who read your e-mail messages don’t have the benefit of your pitch, tone, inflection, or other non-verbal cues. Your positive or negative tone (through the words you choose) has a tremendous impact on relationships.  Choose wisely.
• Be Intentional – Don’t leave your relationships to chance, stay connected with all members of your team, regardless of where they are and where they work.  Here are some specific ways you can be intentional about staying connected.
  • Acknowledge milestones – service anniversaries, specific accomplishments, birthdays, weddings, birth of children, etc.
  • Relate to others as people – learn about their families, hobbies and interests, and passions.
  • Use all available technology – telephone conversations, teleconferences, videoconferences, Skype, email, instant messaging and texting – to stay in touch. Different modalities work better for different people.
  • Read Love is the Killer App by Tim Sanders. It is a really impactful book about putting people at the center and leading with love.

Building successful relationships requires trust. Make and keep your commitments. Build successful relationships by maintaining a positive tone. People remember how you make them feel long after they remember the content of a conversation.
Building successful relationships requires you to be intentional about connecting. Use all technologies to stay connected but remember that you are interacting with a person and not a machine.
Increase your remote success by applying these tips today!